There have been 18 (at least) Electronic Arts made games brandishing the word Fifa since 1993. That's 13 years. This earliest was converted to Amiga, DOS, Game Gear, Mega Drive, Sega CD, Sega Master System, SNES and of cause and why we are here the 3DO Multiplayer.
The 3DO got the best version.
There are two elements to any game: Game-play and graphics - and this first iteration of the Fifa brand, certainly on the 3DO, pulled off both with a certain elegance.
The game is well balanced, the difficulty is fair and there is no need to have the hand-to-eye coordination of a profession sniper to score some goals. This game is genuinely fun to play and engrossing.
However I find Football games in themselves are odd. For the most part Soccer is a viewers sport. For most soccer fans they prefer to watch the 90 minutes of game, rather than actually run around a field themselves for 90 minutes.
So - you would have thought the option to participate in a none-physically challenging alternative to real soccer for 90 minutes would be popular. Which it is. But no one plays a single match of simulated soccer for 90 minutes. It doesn't usually stretch beyond 5 to 10 minutes for each half.
For some reason, probably to keep the game interesting in a virtualised environment, the game is reduced in time by almost a factor of 10. But the score isn't. In the real world a game of only 10 minutes would produce most commonly a score of nil-nil. Or at best one-nil. Yet soccer video games manage to keep the scores realistic - while abandoning realistic time and abandoning for the most part realistic player vitality - and then they promote 'realism' as a selling point. In fairness - it is not real at all.
Not that vitality is a variable in Fifa on the 3DO.
The Teams, Countries, Players, are all represented. The option to play Friendlies, Tournaments, Championships and Leagues is available, which is presumably to virtualise the other half of the soccer world - the drama of the league positions.
Graphically for 1993 Fifa is amazing. Animated players running about and waving with joy or staring in disbelief. The pitch rotates, scales, zooms in and out impressively and even the crowd is animated - a selling feature in 1993.
Fifa International Soccer is a top draw game for the 3DO. Whatever happened to the Fifa brand during the subsequent 13 years is not relevant here - suffice to say the foundations were solid.
Not rare at all!
3DO Kid.
