Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear... A truly terrible game.

User Rating: 1.5 | FIFA Soccer 97 SNES
I honestly don't know where to start to describe what it feels like to play FIFA 97 on Super Nintendo. Maybe with a bit of history:

Back in 1996 when this game was released we were entering a new era. A little console called the Playstation had recently hit the gaming market. The 16 bit consoles were still hanging on for their lives, but all the gaming designers' efforts were to go into PC and PS games (and rightly so)... but boy did it show for this gem of a game!

EA's FIFA series has often flirted with controversy, and back in these days they managed quite an achievement for the SNES. Fifa 97 is actually the worst football game they put out for his console. Fifa 96 is better, still bad but better, and FIFA International Soccer (their first main release) is better than both of them put together!

So... The gameplay. The gameplay is what hits you like a massive jackhammer of disappointment when you finally kick off. Imagine you've waited weeks to finally get your hands on the latest game with the new features and teams for the new season. Full of excitement you put the cartridge in start a match as soon as possible and then... you get this ball of total rubbish. The controls are pretty clear in the manual, but are impossible to actually do. The players seem to run around after the ball, whilst never really having it under control. The shooting is random, not much point aiming for one side or another. There’s no way of dribbling and the players just seem to slow down completely once they have the ball. Most of the time you have no idea what is going on. Fifa 97 also features the very popular indoor court. Sounds cool and all, but take the problems I mentioned earlier and multiply them by 10. The indoor gameplay is just silly.

The sound is poor. Just a noise with the occasional “throw in!”, “corner!” or “goal!” of commentary when the ball goes in or out. The menus are lengthy bland and annoying. The graphics are very bad considering past games. The team kits are more often than not wrong. I could go on…

When you see what was achieved by Konami for the Super Nintendo with ISS Deluxe, you can’t help but laugh.

On a final note, the transfers aren’t up to date for the 1996/1997 season. Not so much of a big deal now… But one of the main reasons why I bought the game back then was so that I could play with Alan Shearer and Newcastle (the main big transfer of the previous summer)... but, other big jackhammer to the head, no transfer updates at all, no Shearer for the Toon. Ridiculous. And of course editing features were somewhat unheard of for the Snes back then.

I ended up taking the game back. You should give it a try though, just for the experience. But pick it up for free or on an emulator, because it isn’t even worth a penny. But I dare you to play it for more than 10 minutes.