FIFA 98: Road to World Cup

FIFA 98: Road to World Cup is the entry many players remember as the moment the series finally found the balance between arcade fun and at least basic footballing credibility. The main new feature is hinted at in the subtitle: a full qualification campaign for the World Cup, in which the player picks any of a huge number of national teams and works their way through the groups all the way to the final tournament. Alongside that, club leagues, cups, friendlies, and an indoor mode with adjusted rules and a faster pace are all present.

On the pitch, the game leans on fast but readable controls, emphasizing short passing combinations, crosses, and first-time shots. Set pieces gained manual, aimed setup, tactical options let you adjust formation and playing style, and the lineup could be tweaked to suit the opponent. Technically, it was one of the first entries to draw heavily on 3D accelerators on PC, so with acceleration enabled it offered smoother motion, sharper player models, and better stadium lighting than software rendering could manage. An inseparable part of the experience is the sound: crowd reactions, commentary, and above all licensed music that an entire generation of players associates so strongly with the menu screen that the tracks became part of collective memory.

At the time it was one of the best-selling sports games and cemented the FIFA brand's position in Europe, where it became almost synonymous with football on the computer. Its influence is clear in how the series settled into the structure it would keep for years: a huge roster of licensed teams, tournament modes, and an emphasis on broadcast atmosphere. Today the game is of course dated in every respect, from crude models to simplistic opponent defending, but anyone who fires it up quickly remembers why an entire afternoon could vanish into it, and why two-player tournaments used to run late into the night.