FIFA 97 is the first game in the series I can remember the release of, and a big moment for it. FIFA Soccer 96 took the crucial step of moving to representing real football players, but the most popular version was the Mega Drive one that carried on the 16-bit era with nearly no other changes. For FIFA 97, the top version is the PlayStation one, and the difference from the FIFA Soccer 96 I played is probably the biggest jump between any two successive versions in the whole life of the series.
What’s new in FIFA 97?
Where to start? The view, the control scheme, nearly everything about the way matches play out. The default view may not quite match up to the swoopy-cam majesty of Actua Soccer, but being in genuine freeform 3D is still quite a transformation (even the PlayStation and Saturn versions of FIFA Soccer 96 used 2D sprites). There is also new audio commentary, meaning you can hear Andy Gray supplying such insight as “Two goalkeepers wouldn’t have stopped that one” and legendary commentator John Motson regularly reading out the scoreline in fragmented automated-train-announcement style. The score is… Sampdoria… nil… Milan… three! The number of players that he has recorded the names of is genuinely impressive. Also, FIFA 97 has a six-a-side indoor mode for some reason.
What’s gone?
The ostentatious star shape that previously marked the player you were controlling is no more, replaced by a filled circle that changes shade depending on whether you nominally have the ball or not. The score-board animations after goals are kind of gone or at least, remarkably, replaced with something more bafflingly terrible. Now at half-time and various notable events there is video footage from unrelated real football matches, with a bit of animated text (say, “you lose”) sliding into place over it.
What’s stayed?
The menu set-up and the range of modes of play remains broadly similar, and club teams still get the same flags made up of stripes of their colours. There’s actually not a huge amount to mark this as obviously being the same series, with its lack of strong identity a strength in making the big step to 3D. The US league still features made up players (and has New York as an unrealistically good team).
Who is on the cover?
David Ginola (Newcastle, M, 92). This is the first time that the idea of a recognisable big name as selling point comes in. The French winger and soon-to-be L’Oreal advert star was also used for the motion capture for the game’s animations, giving a further sense of endorsement while drawing attention to EA’s flash technological advances.
What’s on the soundtrack?
Michael J. Sokyrka and Joel Simmons provide dire proto-nu-metal instrumentals which point up a lack of coherent aesthetic identity, although it’s maybe for the best that the rest of the game doesn’t follow through on that identity in any great sense. As if listening to it wasn’t bad enough, every time a new track starts the menus hang for a second or two for it to load.
Who is the best player in the game?
The rating is now labelled ‘overall’ as it will be from now on, so we have a clear and unambiguous stat for who is the best. And it’s M Rossi, Sampdoria striker, rated 97. This is… puzzling. Marco Rossi, current manager of Hungary’s national side, did play for Sampdoria in the era represented. He was a defender, though, and not a particularly remarkable one. He never made it to the Italian national side. His wikipedia page doesn’t even bother talking about his playing career beyond presenting the bare stats. Playing a match in FIFA 97 as Sampdoria, Rossi doesn’t particularly stand out from all the players on the pitch rated a few points below anyway, though. We are a long, long way from the coming time when both players of FIFA and the football players themselves will care deeply about the ratings in the game.
Who is the worst player in the game?
Even teams which show up on the team rating screen as being terrible, like (pre-handover) Hong Kong, seem to have mostly players rated in the 80s. Trying to find lower was a bit of a random search, and I only covered club teams as those were easier to do via the transfers option that lets you move players between teams. The Malaysian league came through with huge numbers of players with the same low rating, but the scale appears even more squashed than that of FIFA Soccer 96 as the number I kept seeing was 73.
What do the players look like?
I remember when FIFA 97 came out and I was phenomenally excited by the realism shown in the players on the back of the box, wishing that we had a PC that was up to playing it. Not only has the passage of time taken away from its allure, the PlayStation version has to compromise from the PC one too (not surprising when even years-old Doom on PlayStation couldn’t match the original). Everyone is stocky and blocky and standard, as is very apparent in zoomed-in replays. At least players finally have a variety of skin and hair colours even within each team. There’s not exactly a lot of variation and detail beyond that though, and I would struggle to pick David Ginola or anyone else out on the pitch.
How does it play?
FIFA 97’s new view doesn’t just look a little more flash than its predecessors, but does give a nice and understated sense of freedom. In line with that is the fact that it doesn’t rely on so much of what happens being already structured, with more of a sense of a ball reacting to emergent events. That loses much of the spectacular from previous games, although getting a better view of shots scored from ridiculous angles compensates a little, and there is a new rainbow flick button combo if you want to give the ball away in a new and entertaining way. The way that more freedom is provided doesn’t fix many of the existing issues either, though. There is a ponderous reaction time to a lot of commands, with players seemingly having to think deeply about kicking the ball before doing so. There’s also a basic issue with passing the ball which I found endlessly infuriating, which is that the game takes the direction you’re pressing as sacrosanct above all other factors. Many times I tried for a simple pass to another player in nearby space, only to find that I was a few degrees out in direction and that FIFA 97 instead interpreted this as asking for a pass to a different player standing half of the length of the pitch behind him, marked by an opponent with another two in the intervening space. This makes some sense of the game’s indoor six-a-side mode, as the smaller playing area and fewer players makes for a game where it’s a lot less of a gamble whether pressing a button will achieve what you actually wanted. It is however a bit of failing for a football simulation that the minority version simulated is much more fun than the standard game.
How does it score on the sepp-blatter-rain-of-banknotes.gif greed index?
We’re back to the status of FIFA Soccer 95 but even more so. FIFA 97 is genuinely new and different from predecessors, and doesn’t push selling anything to players unless you count in-match advertising boards for HP Pavilion. It scores zero sepp-blatter-rain-of-banknotes.gifs.
If FIFA 97 was a football team at the time, who would it be?
The Middlesbrough team of Juninho, Emerson and Fabrizio Ravanelli — flashy and new but ultimately relegated due to basic failures.
