The FIFA series arrived in 1994 with FIFA International Soccer, and was quickly hailed as one of the best football titles ever. A year later FIFA 95 was released to the same reception, once again, a year passed and FIFA 96 was released. This was the first FIFA title to feature Club teams and it took them from all of Europe’s top leagues,Italy,Spain,England,France,Scotland,Holland,Sweden and non European leagues such as Brazil,the USA and Malaysia(Malaysia?) and in its last appearance EA’s All star teams (eg. European All Stars,African All Stars) and threw them in with as comprehensive a selection of footballing nations as the video gaming world had ever seen.
Once again it was heralded as the greatest football title ever by critics, but 8 years on, 8 FIFA’s, 2 World Cup and 2 European Championship spin-off’s later, how has it held up?

The game has 4 real modes of play, Friendly,League,Tournament and Play Off, all of which are fairly self explanatory, and all that you could really ask from a football title.
The game, for 1996, has some pretty good graphics in its favour. The players all look human and move to a realistic enough to be enjoyable degree. For some reason, every player in the game has white skin, including black players. For some irritating reason every team has the same strip, solid with a horizontal stripe of another colour, in their colours. This means that teams like AC Milan and Juventus have to go without their legendary striped kits, which I find shocking. Games like Sensible soccer managed to contain several kit-types, why couldn’t a title like FIFA?


The game controls like this:

While on the ball:

A:Shoot
B:Pass
X:Sprint
Y:Lob/Cross
L/R: Add Ballspin after kicking

Without the Ball:

A:Run Faster
B:Change Player
X:Tackle 1
Y:Tackle 2
X+A: Foul a player

Sadly the controls seem to take an eternity to respond to your command, and they don’t really work very well even when they do. Hitting a good shot is far more luck than good play on your part.

The sound in the game is good for the time, with it being really reserved to the crowds and their ‘OOHS’ and ‘AHHH’s. the eternal infuriation that is John Motson provides a slight Commentary on the action through basic things like ‘IT’S A GOAL’, although it sounds more like ‘Gowl’ to me.

While I believe a sports game can only really be good or bad, this was a game that was good at the time, but has aged terribly. It is still playable, just. This doesn’t mean that you should, because the Snes does have better football titles, such as International Superstar Soccer Deluxe and Fever Pitch Football, which have both stood the test of time to a far more satisfactory degree.
The game just seems so slow, that its like watching a Scottish third Division tie between two mid table teams. Why anyone would want to play a football title that is like this is beyond me.

There is one other thing that I feel deserves praise, and that is the size of the pitch. You do get a genuine feeling of a large pitch, in a large stadium and not the horrible little 7-a-side looking thing that appears in a lot of 16-Bit Football titles.

The reason I feel most disappointed by FIFA 96 is that I remember how good it was at the time. It was the first game to use proper club names, and proper player names and go for a genuine footballing experience, but nowadays almost every football title has these, and the gameplay has been superseded by the numerous other FIFA titles, and a few of Konami’s rival ISS games.

To be honest, if you have fond memories of FIFA 96, I would leave them as that. It hasn’t aged at all well, and the only reason I scored it so high was that I remember at the time it was an absolute milestone in the world of Football gaming, sadly the milestone has toppled.

There are much better Super Nintendo games out there, and much better Super Nintendo games representing the sport as well.

Other Football Reviews

International Superstar Soccer Deluxe for Super Nintendo
Sega Worldwide Soccer 97 for Sega Saturn
Olympic Soccer for Sega Saturn
FIFA 2003 for Microsoft XBox
AC Milan Home Shirt 02/03 by Adidas
France Home Shirt 02/03 by Adidas
Italia Home Shirt 00/02 by Kappa
AS Roma Third Shirt 01/02 by Kappa
Escape to Victory


Recommended: No