The Retro FIFA Discussion Thread (All FIFA games by EA are welcome!)

I've played a Fifa 15 career on and off with Genoa and I've arrived over january without even realizing.

This game is fun. Fifa 16 is obviously a better and more polished title/evolution, but I missed completey this one when it came out at the times and now that I'm exploring it with more attention it feels really fresh. Good AI, varied matches. Ignite is (imho) a fantastic environment to simulate football. Maybe it's a bit pointy in some circumstances but in some others it gives back a great, realistic feel.
And then there is defending. It's so satisfying to pull even simple stuff like this:
I truly miss this engine. I keep wondering if the legacy games on Switch are any more evolved than this..
 
FIFA 11 PC was the first next-gen fifa on PC and it was a port of FIFA 10 ps3 with some changes for gameplay..FIFA 11 PS3 and FIFA 11 PC were different games...Its a good game but it has many tet-a-tet vs goalkeepers i mean the defenders are too high and the attackers are going easily 1 vs goalkeepers all the time...EA should port the FIFA World Cup 2010 gameplay for FIFA 11 PC...
I never like the older versions for FIFA on PC...I mean the FIFA 08-10 on PC...Some people said that the old gen FIFA were better than PES 2008-2010...But i disagree...
 
@Madmac79 yeah FIFA 15 & 16 was probably my happiest years as a FIFA fan. It just felt these games were truly next gen football experiences & so varied in terms of scope compared to PES at the time.

15' was probably the most excited I was for a FIFA game and I even rushed down there to pick it up at midnight too, great memories.
 
After dusting off my PS3 recently I was stunned by the sheer number of FIFA 15 saves on the machine. Turns out I played that game A LOT. I bought a PS4 for the occasion and was underwhelmed. I picked it up for the PS3 and it was glorious.

As much as I'm enjoying the PESes from that era for the first time, I'm in no doubt that FIFA was well ahead in its time and probably in its pomp as a series.
 
I never really gave PS2 FIFA a chance back in the day as PES was always so far ahead on the pitch, but I'm just wondering if we underrated it in some ways because PES was so good?

Having watched videos recently about some of EA's American sports titles on PS2 (Madden, NBA Live, MVP Baseball) and the depth of their offline modes, I wondered if FIFA 04-08 on PS2 had a similarly deep offline experience (at least off the pitch). I owned a couple of them but never really got stuck into any of the game modes in PS2 FIFA enough to remember much about them.

This especially sounds awesome, depending how good Total Club Manager was of course, but surely it was deeper than the usual career modes in football games;


Imagine they did this today, but instead of FIFA Manager/TCM they partnered with Sports Interactive so if you owned FM you could play the matches in FIFA, import FM teams into FIFA etc...
 
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rojofa said:
I never really gave PS2 FIFA a chance back in the day as PES was always so far ahead on the pitch, but I'm just wondering if we underrated it in some ways because PES was so good?

Having watched videos recently about some of EA's American sports titles on PS2 (Madden, NBA Live, MVP Baseball) and the depth of their offline modes, I wondered if FIFA 04-08 on PS2 had a similarly deep offline experience (at least off the pitch). I owned a couple of them but never really got stuck into any of the game modes in PS2 FIFA enough to remember much about them.

This especially sounds awesome, depending how good Total Club Manager was of course, but surely it was deeper than the usual career modes in football games;


Imagine they did this today, but instead of FIFA Manager/TCM they partnered with Sports Interactive so if you owned FM you could play the matches in FIFA, import FM teams into FIFA etc...
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That's the dream. My real dream. As @bsmaff said the other day - if you just took FM Touch (not even the full PC version) and implemented it into FIFA, you'd have an incredible game.

That being said, I played the Football Fusion supported games at the time - and the on-pitch gameplay was dreadful. On the standard difficulties you'd win easily. Turn it up a notch and suddenly, the lines of players moved as one, like foosball players, and you just couldn't get past them. All AI teams and players played the same way. It was completely soulless, and boring.

The main killer for me though was the disc-swapping and save-loading. It was a total pain in the arse.



The management game itself was decent - somewhere in-between how basic LMA Manager was (which I loved) and how complicated Championship Manager was. 1,000x better than any career mode in any football game, of course, because the management elements actually mattered (with it being a management game and everything)!

Also, if I remember rightly, the devs were a German outfit who started out making management games before EA picked them up, so they really cared about what they were making - they weren't just being paid to make a football game because that's where the money was, which is how modern FIFA and PES development feels now.
 
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Chris Davies said:
That's the dream. My real dream. As @bsmaff said the other day - if you just took FM Touch (not even the full PC version) and implemented it into FIFA, you'd have an incredible game.

That being said, I played the Football Fusion supported games at the time - and the on-pitch gameplay was dreadful. On the standard difficulties you'd win easily. Turn it up a notch and suddenly, the lines of players moved as one, like foosball players, and you just couldn't get past them. All AI teams and players played the same way. It was completely soulless, and boring.

The main killer for me though was the disc-swapping and save-loading. It was a total pain in the arse.



The management game itself was decent - somewhere in-between how basic LMA Manager was (which I loved) and how complicated Championship Manager was. 1,000x better than any career mode in any football game, of course, because the management elements actually mattered (with it being a management game and everything)!

Also, if I remember rightly, the devs were a German outfit who started out making management games before EA picked them up, so they really cared about what they were making - they weren't just being paid to make a football game because that's where the money was, which is how modern FIFA and PES development feels now.
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Yeah the disc-swapping with PS2 loading times sounds like a real pain. I thought it might be one of those things that sounded better in theory than it actually was in practice.

Today though if they did a similar thing, especially with digital versions and even moreso installed on next-gen's SSDs, the transitions and loading times would be fast enough that it could just feel like an extension of the same game. It was a brilliant feature but way ahead of it's time trying this in 2003 before the hardware was really there to execute it.

Combining with FM/FM Touch would surely boost the sales of both games, theoretically it seems like a win/win to me, though I'm sure EA would find a way to screw over SI (probably buy them out and ruin FM) or licenses would get in the way...

Unfortunately now we do have the capability on modern hardware to make Football Fusion work perfectly, you can't imagine EA even dreaming of developing features like this for offline/single-player modes these days.
 
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FIFA 14, 15 & 16 are arguably the most satisfying shooting system in a game since probably PES 5 & PES 6, I've notice a lot in frostbite-era FIFA, players barely use their weaker foot, the shots very rarely dip/have topspin, the finesse animation is clunky, and the old FIFA 17 penalty system saw players adjusting their bodies to take the penalty way too late in the run up for the penalty.
 
Owned all but three (08 (football games were dead to me after PES 2008; 17 (was exclusively a PS4 man by then); and Euro 2008 (football games were still dead to me)) of these in the past but luxury of hindsight and all that.

Some of the best football games ever made among this lot. Looking forward to getting reacquainted with World Cup 2010. Superb game.

Scandalous prices, too.

20201003_081732.jpg
 
@Flipper the Priest: I've mentioned that a million times: I can't believe that one can experience a legendary football simulation like PES5 by spending just 50 cents on it like I did, or playing one of the best football games of all time like World Cup 2010 for less than two pounds. Modern football games might be going through their particular dark ages but we're in the golden age of retro.
 
miguelfcp said:
@Flipper the Priest: I've mentioned that a million times: I can't believe that one can experience a legendary football simulation like PES5 by spending just 50 cents on it like I did, or playing one of the best football games of all time like World Cup 2010 for less than two pounds. Modern football games might be going through their particular dark ages but we're in the golden age of retro.
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I actually meant to reply to this but forgot.

It's so true. Today's FIFA and PES may be shite but we're also in an age where you're only five minutes away from playing ISS Pro 98 on your phone.

Everybody now!:

Always look on the bright side of life...

:WHISTLE::WHISTLE::WHISTLE::WHISTLE::WHISTLE::WHISTLE::WHISTLE:
 
Was playing FIFA 11 earlier and it's sad to think FIFA 21 is what we got 10 years later. A game that came out in 2010 for a console released in 2005 has less skating and a better semblance of footplanting than FIFA 21. What the fuck. Unfortunately, it seems like all the key figures that were in charge of FIFA during that era are long gone.
 
Redhat said:
Was playing FIFA 11 earlier and it's sad to think FIFA 21 is what we got 10 years later. A game that came out in 2010 for a console released in 2005 has less skating and a better semblance of footplanting than FIFA 21. What the fuck. Unfortunately, it seems like all the key figures that were in charge of FIFA during that era are long gone.
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Definitely. Out my big package (lol) I received yesterday I fired up 12 last night for a few games. A purely arbitrary choice from the dozen.

From what I've seen of 21 there's no sign of technological advancement, other than the make up. Only regression in the quality of gameplay.

Sign of a good football game for me is how often you have to use your loaf over your fingers. I couldn't recall it being so difficult to string first time passes together. Gone was the perfunctory one-two zig zag down the wing that was a surefire hit in recent FIFAs. Not an option here.

It now seems a novelty, expecting to be patient in an effort to outwit a machine. Rapidly and extravagantly overpowering a witless CPU just doesn't have the same appeal.

Also, having gotten to grips with latter PS3 PESes over the summer, I feel vindicated with my choices at the time of release. I've been enjoying said PES games, 2013 in particular, but I've little question that the generation's FIFA was far, far superior.
 
Flipper the Priest said:
Owned all but three (08 (football games were dead to me after PES 2008; 17 (was exclusively a PS4 man by then); and Euro 2008 (football games were still dead to me)) of these in the past but luxury of hindsight and all that.

Some of the best football games ever made among this lot. Looking forward to getting reacquainted with World Cup 2010. Superb game.

Scandalous prices, too.

View attachment 61414
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Wait, where did you get those insane prices at? And do they, by chance, ship to Italy?
 

Now that Fifa 08 runs on Xenia, I decided to play some matches. The game isn't bad at all. Gameplay is okay, graphics look better than the sequels [has 3d grass, cloth physics], presentation looks way worse than ps2 games.

But overall, felt nice. If only they ported these versions on pc.
 
My first football game was FIFA 99. As I didn't own neither a PC or a PS1 like the vast majority of boys my age in Yugoslavia, we played video games at gaming lounges. When the other boys saw me playing FIFA 99 everybody told me I was silly and that I should learn to play real football, Winning Eleven, even though everything was in Japanese. That's when I stopped playing FIFA and the only thing I remember is that you sprint on :triangle: and you switch players on :x:. I played PES until PES4 and then I completely stopped playing video games for like ten years.

So I never played any modern FIFA at all, nothing after FIFA 99. I remember there was no pressing button, as in ISS Pro where you hold :x: to defend. Can anyone of you guys who know the history of the game tell me which FIFA first introduced the concept of pressure, in other words a button that you use in defense to follow the opposition player with the ball?
 
Meazza84 said:
My first football game was FIFA 99. As I didn't own neither a PC or a PS1 like the vast majority of boys my age in Yugoslavia, we played video games at gaming lounges. When the other boys saw me playing FIFA 99 everybody told me I was silly and that I should learn to play real football, Winning Eleven, even though everything was in Japanese. That's when I stopped playing FIFA and the only thing I remember is that you sprint on :triangle: and you switch players on :x:. I played PES until PES4 and then I completely stopped playing video games for like ten years.

So I never played any modern FIFA at all, nothing after FIFA 99. I remember there was no pressing button, as in ISS Pro where you hold :x: to defend. Can anyone of you guys who know the history of the game tell me which FIFA first introduced the concept of pressure, in other words a button that you use in defense to follow the opposition player with the ball?
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I loved FIFA 99. European Dream League....looks like itā€™s going to become a reality soon as well haha
 
A few days ago, I managed to extract all the soundtracks, however there was a problem, the program being paid only converted half of the audio and not all, so I will leave you a link of the files to compress and it is str, a material difficult to convert if you don't have it in a paid program, so I will need your help so that this soundtrack is completely released, I already did my part.

STR: http://www.mediafire.com/file/sfe18i42oydo0wb/OST_WORLD_CUP_2002.rar/file

MP3 INCOMPLETE:

http://www.mediafire.com/file/7kwab8ipwpwxuyp/WORLD_CUP_2002.rar/file

This OST is the best I have ever heard and it needs to be released.
 
miguelfcp said:
Inspired by the negativity around the modern FIFA game, I wrote...this: ten ways to rekindle one's passion for the FIFA series, from great mods to the series' classics.
https://liberomagazine.wordpress.co...ways-to-rekindle-your-passion-for-the-series/
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That was a wonderfully structured and written article with the usual humour thrown in (FIFA Street is for plebs šŸ˜‚) or the endearing seduction of nostalgia in reference to the iconic soundtracks of our childhoods.

FIFA always used to be the spoiled fat ginger kid with the wealthier parents who wandered onto the gritty streets of the PES council estate and was welcomed as such but I think in hindsight it had it's moments, There's still some delight in the PS2 game's charm and of course the self serious turnaround of the early 2010's was a giant revolution in football gaming. Those PS3 games can almost certainly be considered retro now as a whole new generation of consoles is just days away from providing generational daylight between then and now and a whole new generation of kids will be introduced to the series this Christmas with an innocent assumption that the games were always this technologically sophisticated while you and I and everyone else here remember picking our jaws up off the floor once we sampled FIFA 08 just like it was yesterday.

Damn. Ageing really is a reality huh?

However I walked away from your piece learning something new today, That there is an ongoing patch for FIFA 14 called the classic patch which aims to be a comprehensive collection of footballing history? Holy shit why am I only just finding out about this? And they say PES 6 modding is an underground niche!
 
@Njorgo7: FIFA soundtracks literally shaped my taste in music, and I suspect it did also for many millions of people out there. It's a massive culture achievement, proving gaming goes way beyond mere entertainment: it's artistically and culturally relevant.

@MafiaMurderBag: Many thanks MMB, glad you enjoyed it. I have written very little, if anything about the history of FIFA at this point, but as I was finishing the article I had that sudden realization that there was a lot of juice in that apple too. There is a rich history behind this series that is worth exploring, whether out of curiosity or nostalgia or both, especially, as you brilliantly put it, considering a new generation of FIFA games is about to blossom. That new generation of kids knows next to nothing about the history of FIFA or even football games as a whole, because they're stuck on that consuming mindset, always exclusively playing the modern game, as they've been taught to. If they acknowledge the fascinating story behind the thing they consume, their appreciation for it would skyrocket. They would know that they're not just playing a game, they're experiencing the final result of three decades of tireless work.

About the classic patch for FIFA14, I too was unaware of it. I didn't post the specifics on my article but seriously, take a look at the mod's features on their website. It's unbelievable stuff. It's a new game.
 
For the ultra-hardcores, that can stand the PS2 FIFA versions, there are the PSP FIFAs , which do pretty much what KONAMI did with the PSP versions. All versions up to 2014 are a legacy edition of the FIFA 2005 PS2 version, but polished a little bit, with improvements here and there. The content is a mix-and-match of the 2004-2008 period.

Pretty acceisible if you have an emulator.

 
miguelfcp said:
@MafiaMurderBag: About the classic patch for FIFA14, I too was unaware of it. I didn't post the specifics on my article but seriously, take a look at the mod's features on their website. It's unbelievable stuff. It's a new game.
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Well i downloaded it last night and installed my trusted copy of FIFA 14 from Origin that I completely forgot about (I looked on CD keys too first and was shocked to see it cost so much - Ā£16.49 to be specific! You can't even buy it off of Origin anymore either which is a shame. This is what game preservation has come to, Either pay more than you would for a year old regular PS4 game for a last gen game or piracy. You can argue that games as art should hold a good value as a lot of labour went to into the process of creating it and you can be shocked to see some of these football games gathering dust for less than Ā£1 in second shops but the inconsistency can be jarring above all. But I digress...

Anyway, Downloaded the patch, Downloaded the stadiums with it too and you're right - It's like a totally different game... It's like in another universe where EA made a special football encyclopaedia edition paying homage to the sports forefathers, legendary club and national squads and those iconic tournaments!

That's how polished this patch is, Thousands of players I wasn't expecting to be recreated with faces either. Admittedly the game doesn't look as good as FIFA 16 but it doesn't look bad either, I think the more cartoony, stylised art style of the game actually compliments the theme of the mod that it's classic players and makes it look a lot more like a video game than uncanny valley.

Most importantly, The gameplay holds up really, really well. It's a great balance between simulation, fantastically fluid animations and fun responsive gameplay.

Another day, Another retro football awakening. Wow.
slamsoze said:
For the ultra-hardcores, that can stand the PS2 FIFA versions, there are the PSP FIFAs , which do pretty much what KONAMI did with the PSP versions. All versions up to 2014 are a legacy edition of the FIFA 2005 PS2 version, but polished a little bit, with improvements here and there. The content is a mix-and-match of the 2004-2008 period.

Pretty acceisible if you have an emulator.
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It actually looks more like FIFA 07 PS2 to me if I'm not mistaken just because of the ball physics alone? I remember getting the PS2 version of 07 a month before getting the Xbox 360 version and thinking it actually wasn't so bad because the ball physics gave you a sense of unpredictability for the first time on that system. Here I am talking about 07 on the 360, Waiting that extra month for a next gen experience which at the time was experimental compared to 08, But with far less media to consume before release back then compared to now, It really was a mystery with what to expect with that game at the time and it was so exciting.

Now, We're not long off the first next gen football game and we're yet to see the proof in the pudding. Will it be a ground breaking new football experience from another world, The likes of which we never thought was possible in our lifetimes or will it be more like FIFA 14 PS4, More like a port with more animation frames and internet breaking textures on MbappƩ's ****ing hair...
 
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