How Electronic Arts Marketed The FIFA Football Video Games Over The Years PART I : FIFA INTERNATIONAL SOCCER - 1993 ⚽ #retrogaming

Before FIFA came along soccer video games were generally simple affairs with not many thrills or presentation. Animation was generally limited and rightly or wrongly the main focus of titles like Kick Off and Sensible Soccer was the playability rather than the look of the game. 

FIFA from EA Sports changed all of that by introducing a game that was not only fun to play but also lovely to look at. 

I thought it would be fun to look at as many of the Iterations of FIFA over the years to see what (if anything) changed across each release. I do this stuff for shits and giggles, some people say I'm broken but maybe I'm just 🎶football crazy, football mad!🎶

Let's KICK OFF shall we?

FIFA INTERNATIONAL SOCCER - 1993

1. EA Soccer was the working title before release in 1993 as seen in the Mean Machines SEGA Issue 11 Preview article.
2. There was a heavy mention of the 4 Player EA Four Way capability as at the time there wasn't much support of 4 player games without an adapter of some kind. The EA 4 Play Adapter was EA's attempt to get involved in the 4 player multitap market and also supported other EA Sports games such as the EA NHL series of games.
3. 
   EA promoted the fact that this was the first 16 MEG Soccer Game on the SEGA Mega Drive / Genesis.
4. The animations in the game were super advanced for the time and featured 2000 frames of player animations which was seen as a major advancement for sports games.
5. The 3D Isometric view had not really been seen before in Soccer games, generally it was either a top down view or side on view for Soccer video games.
6. There were 5 different camera angles to allow for 8 different directions that you could control your player in which was another first for soccer video games.
7. The on screen crowd were animated and they had digitised cheers, chants and boos.
8. The game featured 24 National Teams and all of them had different playing styles.
9. You could manage team formations and strategies before and during the game which was revolutionary for the genre.
10. The attacking / defensive slider could be changed during the game leading to you be able to shut up shop if you go ahead.
11. The presentation was akin to a tv show featuring EA Sport's Ron Barr anchoring the presentation across all of EA Sports games.
12. 
    The goal celebrations have great animations and also cut to the pixel art scoreboards for more goal animations, it looks very cool.
    
13. Weirdly FIFA International Soccer didn't have penalty shootouts (maybe trying to cater to USA audiences?)
14. You get access to full replays at any point which is cool.
15. You can have offsides in the game but you can also turn them off.
16. Weirdly the game doesn't have an on screen clock which is kind of odd.
17. The big seller for EA was getting the FIFA licence which at the time gave them something of a unique position in the video games sports market for soccer games (that licence served them well for many decades!)

The Preview Article in Mean Machines SEGA Issue 11 (September 1993)

The Review Article in Mean Machines SEGA Issue 14 (December 1993)

A Magazine Advert in Mean Machines SEGA Issue 14 (December 1993)

IN PART II WE SHALL TAKE A GOOD LOOK AT:

FIFA International Soccer on the 3DO