Overview

Quite simply, Road to the World Cup 98 is my favourite game in the FIFA series, and up until the release of FIFA 05 it was arguably the best in the series.

Graphics

At the risk of sounding overly grandiose or nostalgic like Dave Halverson, or any of the other writers at Play Magazine (a videogame mag that has it’s heart in the right place and it’s head in the wrong place – namely up its ass), I think most veteran gamers have a select few gaming moments that stand-out in their mind above all others. For some it’s the moment they saw the T-Rex rushing at them in the original Tomb Raider, for others it’s the moment they realize they haven’t finished Castlevania: SOTN and have to go back through the entire castle.

For me, one of these moments has to be the first time I saw the fantastic 3D modeled polygonal players run onto the pitch in FIFA: RTWC 98. Sure, FIFA 97 for the PC was the first FIFA game to officially feature 3D models, but the game was plagued by clipping, poor player models and shit gameplay. The moment I saw England run onto the pitch at Wembley on a sunny day (with one of the first examples of lens flare in a game I can remember) I thought I was going to piss my pants.

I think the worlds ‘holy fucking shit’ may have come out of my mouth at that point, but I’m not too sure. Unfortunately, graphics in videogames don’t always stand the test of time and RTWC 98 is one such example as I was distinctly under-whelmed with the visuals once the nostalgia had worn off.

That said, it’s by no means butt-ugly and it was one hell of a graphical powerhouse for its time. As I alluded to, the most graphically impressive aspect of RTWC 98 came from the fantastic stadiums which were far and away better than anything I’d seen on a console. Also adding to the immersive-ness of the stadia were the special graphical effects like the aforementioned lens-flare, as well as awesome rain (with intermittent lightning) effects. The indoor stadium is also modeled nicely with great Astroturf-like pitch textures.

Player models are so-so, with no real difference between body-builds and some pretty bad accuracy problems (Michael Owen has a beard!). The game’s animations haven’t held up so well over the years and transitions that I once thought to be pretty smooth are a tad on the jerky-side and not nearly as good as the animations in ISSPE (both games were released around the same time). With the exception of the intro, end of match, and Cup winning sequences the TV-style presentation is fairly sparse which falls into line with many of the sports games released around this time.

Sound

FIFA 96 on the PC totally blew me away with the fantastic commentary and really set in motion the FIFA standard of excellence when it comes to game audio. Road to the World Cup 98 is no exception with excellent commentary by John Motson and Andy Gray. Playing the game now the commentary and colour comments don’t occur as frequently as the more recent games, but the commentary still blows away that of ISS Pro Evo. Furthermore, RTWC 98 features a soundtrack that was, until the release of FIFA 06 this year, my favourite of all time.

Options

With most of these retro-reviews I’m used to comparing features from old games and finding that they don’t quite stack up to what’s available today. Road to the World Cup 98’s feature-set is a very notable exception as the number of teams and play modes available puts many of today’s games (and in particular Road to the World Cup 06) to shame.

Get a load of this:

What’s even more astounding is that over the next few years EA Sports would actually TAKE-OUT many of these features and either return them to subsequent games (hailing them as ‘new’ additions) or fail to return them to the series at all! To this day FIFA fans have yet to see a return of the excellent Indoor Soccer mode, while many of the tactical and strategic gameplay additions went AWOL from the series for many years after this game’s release.

Having a FULL list of FIFA teams (a total of 172, more than DOUBLE the paltry 72 found in FIFA RTWC 06) makes a hell of a difference to the appeal and longevity of the game. I still have fond memories of when I took minnows like Sri Lanka and Vanuatu to the World Cup finals! Most recently, I’ve had a blast guiding Tanzania to the finals in France! It’s also really neat to experience the qualifying different processes that teams from different qualifying regions have to go through.

Gameplay

It’s a testament to the quality of the gameplay in both RTWC 98 and the pseudo-sequel World Cup ’98 that it wasn’t until the 2005 and 2006 FIFA games that the gameplay was bettered…………..okay, maybe it isn’t so much a testament to the quality of the gameplay and more so a testament to the ineptitude of EA Sports’ programmers over the years, but you get the point!!

The game controls like most classic FIFA titles;

D-pad --> movement

Triangle --> sprint

Circle --> shoot

X --> pass

Square --> lob

R2 & L2 + face buttons --> 'skill' moves

R1 --> side-step

With slide tackles, blocking tackles and hip check/Keano tackles performed by many of the same buttons when you don’t have the ball. What makes Road to the World Cup 98 so neat are the additions and combinations in the control scheme. For example, you can do a through pass by double tapping X or a lobbed through pass by taping and holding Square. Likewise, while the shooting doesn’t have a power-bar you can still perform a chip shot by double tapping circle or a low daisy-cutter by just tapping circle. Another control addition (that later showed up in Sony’s This Is Football/World Tour Soccer on the PS2 and was incorrectly lauded as a ‘first’) is the DIVE function that’s carried out by tapping R1!

The gameplay itself sits nicely between the realism of ISS Pro Evo and the over-the-top arcadeyness (I know its not a word) of the Kick Off or SWOS games. Along with World Cup ’98, this game was one of the last ‘good’ FIFA games before the dark ages of FIFA 99-2004. Consequently, the referees DO actually call fouls, you CAN’T always 360 spin your way down the field, you CAN’T score with bullet headers from 35 yards out and you rarely, if ever, feel like the game is cheating you.

Longevity/Replay Value

When this game originally came out I remember playing it to death – not only participating in lengthy World Cup Qualifying and Finals campaigns, but also full league campaigns. Multiplayer is also a blast and I have fond memories of a few 4 or 5 versus the CPU matches my friends and I used to play.

Overall

I really enjoyed taking a trip down memory lane with Road to the World Cup 98. Along with the original ISS Pro Evolution its one of my favourite games of the 32-bit era. The gameplay hasn’t aged particularly well, but its still very playable and you can’t beat the feature-set!

Lavan Chandran

22/11/2005