Before FIFA 13: The Evolution Of Football's Biggest Gaming Franchise

In the early 1990's, EA Sports were making a name for themselves by releasing sports games revolving around Basketball and American Football, such as NBA Live and Madden NFL. Wanting to branch out into other sports, EA then began working on a Soccer game and, on 15th July 1993, FIFA International Soccer was released. It was this title that set the ball rolling for the juggernaut that became the FIFA series. With nineteen games released to date, not including the spin off titles dedicated to the European Championships, World Cup and, more recently, Street Football, FIFA is today the best selling football game on the market. The twentieth game in the series, FIFA 13, is out this month and is the most highly anticipated release in the acclaimed series so far. The game has been released in eighteen languages, been made available in 51 countries, and has sold over 100 million copies worldwide. Nineteen years ago, EA Sports could only have dreamed of such success. When they were releasing the Madden and NBA Live series onto the market, there was next to no competition, they then blazed the trail for some of the world€™s most popular sports to find themselves replicated in game. However, when they released their first in the football series, they found stiff competition. Games such as "Sensible Soccer", "Kick Off" and "Match Day" had been in development since the 1980's, and football games were by no means a new innovation in the same way the American Football and Basketball series were at the time. In recent times, the Pro Evolution Soccer series has challenged EA Sport's stranglehold on the football gaming market, but how did the FIFA series itself evolve? Here, What Culture! takes you back to when it all began, and examines the games in the series that contributed to making FIFA one of, if not the greatest football games of all time. Put on your shinpads, pull up your socks and prepare to go back to when it all began. 1993 - FIFA International Soccer With computer football games such as the aforementioned Kick off already on the market, FIFA International Soccer (also more commonly referred to as FIFA 94) became the first football game to use isometric view graphics. Previous football games preferred to use simplistic top down graphics, or birds eye view graphics employed by Sensible Soccer. FIFA also stood out from the competition by being the only football game to hold an official licence from FIFA, the world governing body of Football. FIFA International Soccer was released in celebration of America hosting the 1994 World Cup, and as such only featured national teams. Although heavily bugged, (there was one notorious glitch allowing the player to stand in front of the goalkeeper and allow the ball to rebound off them and into the net), the game, which was released on the PC, SNES and Game Boy, amongst others, was number 1 in the UK charts, where it remained for a whole six months.