EA Sports Grabs its Piece of the Cup

We call it soccer. The rest of the world calls it futbòl. EA Sports is calling it World Cup 98 - and EA plans to bring this license to PC gamers on May 19.

To put things in perspective, the World Cup, sponsored by The Federation Internationales de Football Association (FIFA), is much larger than the Super Bowl and blows our World Series out of the field. This year's event, appropriately deemed France 98 (Coupe du Monde), will bring the series back to FIFA's home turf, visiting ten cities throughout France, including Paris, Toulouse, Marseilles, Bordeaux, and others, beginning June 10 and concluding July 12 at Le Stade du France in Saint-Denis.

EA's World Cup 98 translates this actual event to a gaming environment, including the 32 participating teams (eight bonus teams as well) within the ten Cup stadiums scattered about France. The game will also include World Cup Classics Mode, furnishing eight historical matches for players to relive, playing as one of 12 classic FIFA teams.

World Cup 98 will reportedly include more moves, smarter AI, the ability to dodge other players by jumping over them, a faster engine that will ensure speedy gameplay and response times, and a handicap option that allows you to match, say, the United States (as of today ranked 16th) against a team such as Brazil (ranked 1st) and actually have a fighting chance.

Besides those features, players can also expect motion captures of key athletes, voice-overs from well-known announcers such as John Motson, Chris Waddle, Kenneth Wostenholme, Desmond Lynam, and Gary Lineker, national anthems, one-touch passing, crowd battle cries with accents, multiplayer options, analog control for the PS, and eight different language modes to play the game in. And if it's the history you're after, not the sport, die-hard fans will be able to put their knowledge to work during half-time trivia challenges, which would no doubt be more fun than watching a marching band.