As discussed with FIFA Soccer 95, I’m applying the same set of questions to every FIFA game to better demonstrate the gradual evolution of the series. FIFA Soccer 96 for the Mega Drive has one key change, if not many others…
What’s new in FIFA Soccer 96?
Rather than teams filled with imaginary people, FIFA Soccer 96 takes the crucial step of representing real players. Well, outside of the US league where they’re still made up. And if the Premier League is representative, it was a season out of date by the time it came out. Nonetheless, this change is critical to FIFA’s appeal to football fans and to being able to sell yearly updates, and keeping up to date will only get more important over time. The step from playing out something which might happen in a match between Manchester United and Liverpool to playing out an action which Eric Cantona might do is a significant one in the level of recognition it can evoke.
What’s gone?
Nothing noticeable.
What’s stayed?
Pretty much everything, at least on the Mega Drive. Differences from FIFA Soccer 95 are superficial. The Sega Saturn and PlayStation versions of FIFA 96 saw the debut of a 3D approach, and it’s easy to theorise that the energy went there leaving the Mega Drive and SNES versions to be quick rehashes. A lot more people still had those consoles, though, so it’s the version which looks and plays the same which is the one which did best.
Who is on the cover?
An action shot of Jason McAteer of the Republic of Ireland trying to get past Frank de Boer (Netherlands, Defender, Skill 80) to get to the ball. As befits a game with real players, it’s a little more recognisable than last time, at least in that I successfully identified Jason McAteer from a low-res preview of the cover – the green shirt and mid-’90s boyband haircut combo being a giveaway. Amusingly Jason doesn’t appear to be present in the game though, either for Ireland or Liverpool, so I guess he is still just standing in for A. N. Other.
What’s on the soundtrack?
Graeme Coleman is the composer this time, and maybe he did so for the more advanced versions and the conversion to Mega Drive didn’t go too well. That’s the best explanation I can come up with for the soundtrack of malfunctioning funk robots which might most politely be described as ‘surprisingly avant-garde’.
Who is the best player in the game?
This gets more interesting now we have real players. Brazil and Italy’s pre-eminence comes through again and three of their players are out in the lead for the highest skill ratings:
R. Baggio (Midfielder, Italy) 95
Bebeto (Forward, Brazil) 95
Romario (Forward, Brazil) 95
This feels a bit more generous than general consensus to Bebeto, the lesser of Brazil’s strike partnership at the time, but not too outrageous.
Who is the worst player in the game?
The lowest rated team I could find were Luxembourg with a team rating one star out of five, but even their lowest-rated player for skill had a rating of 71, which is rather weird use of a 1-99 scale. Perhaps it’s a question of not wanting to be too harsh to real people. Anyway, let’s go with that lowest rated Luxembourg player: Jeff Saibene, midfielder and current manager of FC Ingolstadt 04 in the German third division.
What do the players look like?
See FIFA 95. The chance to attempt likenesses of the players whose names are being used is passed up, which looks worse after International Superstar Soccer showed how it could be done. Brazil do now wear the correct colour blue shorts.
How does it play?
Given that it’s near identical to FIFA 95, it still doesn’t lend itself to a particularly free-flowing type of football, and still makes use of canned animations and a bit of blatant artificial assistance to let you pull off the spectacular with ease. Overhead kicks are still all very well, but if passing to another player without running out of space is still more of a challenge and it still feels like you’re constantly travelling through treacle, it’s even less satisfying than it was previously.
How does it score on the sepp-blatter-rain-of-banknotes.gif greed index?
FIFA 96 adding real players is a significant difference from its predecessor. Nonetheless, the Mega Drive version is more database update than different game, which makes asking people to pay full price for it a little greedy. It earns half of a sepp-blatter-rain-of-banknotes.gif.
If FIFA 95 was a football team at the time, who would it be?
The Blackburn Rovers side that followed up winning the league by finishing seventh and going out of the Champions League in the first round with two of their players sent off for fighting each other – diminishing returns.
