FIFA International Soccer

STORY / GAMEPLAY
This is football, so your main purpose is to win! FIFA International Soccer is loaded with tons of options and features: You can choose weather conditions and pitch type and participate in league, tournament and exhibition matches. The game offers an impressive variety of moves such as back passing, headers and overhead kicks, each one looking great, with quite realistic styles for its time. The original Sega Mega Drive title supports a three-button control so the Amiga version needs the keyboard to come into play! This makes the game rather hard. EA seem to have done all they could to recreate a game that has become a smash on Sega's black console, but in the end the gameplay isn't just the same. As long as you practice a lot, you can actually control the game well, chipping and passing the ball from player to player. Unfortunately, the game has a lot of disk swapping to load the huge amount of graphics data, and this is quite frustrating. Also, the overall action is a bit slow compared to the 16bt console original but the game remains fun!

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The sprites size is pretty large, meaning that you can see those tiny men weaving their magic in good detail, thanks to the realistic view angle. The animations of the players add a nice touch to the experience, the available stadiums are very detailed and the game's sound is good, including crowd effects with appropriate wows and boos that run throughout. Of course there are several other sampled sounds such as ball hitting, referee whistling and the like. The whole package also includes some nice main menu tunes.