FIFA 99 is without doubt one of the best football games ever. The graphics are excellent and playing the game is both frustrating and invigorating. The sense of achievement felt when you manage to score a goal, particularly if it is an important one, is almost like the real thing.
Even the most sane among us must have, at some point in time, clenched our fists or thrown our arms in the air in celebration of a particularly fine goal.
But, like all soccer games, FIFA 99 does have flaws, although most of the imperfections are amusing rather than detrimental to the game. After 10 clean passes and volleying the ball into the net, one of John Motson's co-commentators (Chris Waddle and Mark Lawrenson) offered the opinion that it was a scrappy goal, but that they all count.
Or, if you're lucky enough to be winning a match seven-nil and the opposing goalkeeper manages to make a save, he gets high praise for his brilliance, ignoring the fact that he has picked the ball out of the net seven times already.
Commentary in football games is a black art, and one that is almost impossible to perfect, so one expects the odd gaffe or two. Referees in real life are often condemned for silly decisions, but rarely do you see a player being taken down in the box by the last defender, who doesn't even receive a yellow card. In FIFA 99 the referee will give the penalty but often forget to book the player.
Statistics are also an important part of football games. International teams, club teams and players are all rated within the game. But these statistics can be biased, as is the case with the England team. Despite being knocked out in the second round of the World Cup they are deemed to be better than Germany or Brazil, and equal only to World Champions France. You needn't ask how highly rated the Republic or North of Ireland are.
The players are rated from one to 16 on various aspects of the game. Roy Keane, for instance, scores well in tackling and aggression, while Dennis Bergkamp has greater shot accuracy and ball control than most.
To test how well this works in the game itself, I decided to play against an Arsenal team that had David Seaman playing centre forward and Mr Bergkamp tending the goal. While shooting from all angles at the goal, the Flying Dutchman leaped around, pulling off one brilliant save after another. This was frustrating enough, but my eyes were then treated to David Seaman beating my last defender (Jaap Stam) and rifling the ball into the roof of the net for a goal deemed by the game to be a "scorcher".
A similar experience also happened when I played against Manchester United (switching keepers with strikers), with Peter Schmeichel curling the ball superbly into my goal. But I suppose this should come as no surprise when the Dane is rated higher in 10 of the 11 categories than one of the Premier League's brightest stars - Harry Kewell of Leeds. Who would you like to have in your side, tormenting defences?
With over 70 million units sold worldwide, the GameBoy from Nintendo has now done what few consoles could ever hope to achieve - reaching the age of 10 years. The killer application was undoubtedly Tetris, the simple, but infuriatingly addictive puzzle game designed by Alexei Pajitnov. And today the GameBoy is seen as the Walkman of the video-game industry.
It has seen and met the challenge of more sophisticated hand-held consoles over the years, simply because its batteries lasted longer than a bus journey into town. It now has a library of over 1,000 games and has a full colour screen. In the summer, games that make GameBoy shake will be available through Nintendo's rumble cartridge software.
The Players' Choice is a new budget range of games from Nintendo, priced around £30. The criteria for these games (according to Nintendo) is that they are the most popular titles across Europe, as determined by N64 players, and that they must also have received high scores from the specialist press. The first five games to feature in the range are Mario Kart, F1 World Grand Prix, Lylat Wars, Wave Race and Snowboard Kids.
September 23rd 1999 is the official day for the launch of Sega's Dreamcast in Europe. It will retail at £199 in the UK. Sega expect around 10 titles to be available at the launch, including Virtua Fighter 3tb and Sonic Ad- venture. By Christmas, 20 other games, including Sega Rally 2, House of the Dead 2 and Cool Boarders Dreamcast have been promised. In Japan the Dreamcast sold over one million units in its first four months.
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