FIFA: Road to World Cup 98

FIFA: Road to World Cup 98 (commonly abbreviated to FIFA 98) is an association football video game developed by EA Canada and published by Electronic Arts. It was the fifth game in the FIFA series and the second to be in 3D on the 32-bit machines. A number of different players were featured on the cover, including David Beckham in the UK, Roy Lassiter in the USA and Mexico, David Ginola on the French cover, Raúl on the Spanish cover, Paolo Maldini on the Italian and Andreas Möller on the German cover. FIFA 98 was the last FIFA game released for the Mega Drive in Europe.

Game features

The game includes an official soundtrack and had a refined graphics engine, team and player customisation options, 16 stadiums, improved artificial intelligence and the popular "Road to World Cup" mode, with all 172 FIFA-registered national teams. No subsequent edition of the FIFA series had attempted to replicate FIFA 98's inclusion of every FIFA national team, up until 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil which included all 203 FIFA nations that took part in qualifying. With the new graphical improvements, players were able to have individual faces.

1998 FIFA World Cup

The 1998 FIFA World Cup was the 16th FIFA World Cup, the world championship for men's national association football teams. It was held in France from 10 June to 12 July 1998. The country was chosen as the host nation by FIFA for the second time in the history of the tournament, defeating Morocco in the bidding process.

Qualification for the finals began in March 1996 and concluded in November 1997. For the first time in the competition, the group stage were expanded from 24 teams to 32, with eight groups of four. A total of 64 matches were played in 10 stadiums located across 10 different host cities, with the opening match and final staged at the Stade de France, Saint-Denis.

The tournament was won by France, who beat Brazil 3–0 in the final. France won their first title, becoming the seventh nation to win a World Cup, and the sixth (after Uruguay, Italy, England, West Germany and Argentina) to win the tournament on home soil. Croatia, Jamaica, Japan and South Africa made their first appearances in the finals.

World Cup 98 (video game)

World Cup 98 (known in Europe as FIFA World Cup 98) was the first official FIFA World Cup game developed by EA Sports after obtaining the rights from FIFA in 1997. Unlike the previous World Cup games, which were in 2D and showed a bird's-eye view, World Cup 98 was the first in the franchise to use a 3D engine, utilising DirectX for the PC version. Accurate national team kits (except for the goalkeepers who were issued a generic kit) were introduced complete with kit manufacturer logos and official merchandise. The game engine is based on that of FIFA: Road to World Cup 98, though it features some minor gameplay improvements to areas such as ingame strategy changing and player positioning. The playable teams in the friendly mode also included several nations that did not qualify for the finals. World Cup 98 was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation, Nintendo 64 and Game Boy.

Game modes

The main feature of the game is the World Cup tournament itself, where the player may use either the actual groups used in the finals, or groups composed of a random selection of the included teams. Each match takes place in a recreation of the venue it was played in the actual tournament. As in the real tournament, group games do not go to extra time or a penalty shootout but knockout matches do.