Retro Gaming Australia

FIFA Soccer 97 is the first game in the series to use full polygonal models for its players. FIFA Soccer 97 also introduced the awesome indoor soccer mode, which sadly was cut by the time FIFA 99 came along. It’s not quite as polished as 96 or 98 – EA Canada seemed to have a few issues with collision detection and animation quality in this release, which lead to FIFA Soccer 97 getting some pretty average reviews from critics at the time.

FIFA Soccer 96 was the first annual instalment of the series to feature a 3D camera, then dubbed by EA Sports as “Virtual Stadium” technology. This ad is for the 16-bit Mega Drive version, which lacked that feature, but was still a decent upgrade over FIFA Soccer 95.

In the modern era, sports game updates are relatively incremental affairs – the sheer time it takes to develop a game from the ground up doesn’t gel with the annual release schedule. In the 16-bit era, it was a different story – one year’s sports update could be substantially different from the previous. FIFA ’95 was EA’s second crack at a soccer game, and it offered numerous improvements over the first game, including domestic club teams, vastly improved graphics, control and animation.