FIFA 64

by Gregory Moffett

For many, Christmas is all about surprises and turkey! In 1997, I probably experienced the biggest Christmas surprise of my life so far and without doubt the largest turkey.

Throughout the year, my brother and I had been playing through our collection of SNES games consisting of Super Soccer, Nintendo Scope 6, Super Mario Kart, Paperboy 2, Tom & Jerry and Super Mario World. We didn’t get many games those days so we had to make the most of what we had as well as borrowing classics Donkey Kong Country, A Link to the Past, Starwing and Street Fighter II Turbo from friends.

With this in mind, Christmas was always the best opportunity to add to our roster and that particular year we were hoping for FIFA 97 on the Super Nintendo.

We’d never played a FIFA game before but the lure of being able to play as my beloved Liverpool FC was strong, considering Super Soccer only had a handful of international sides with fictional names.

Opening the wrapping that year expecting to see FIFA 97 was met with a feeling of bewilderment.

The N64 had been out in Europe for several months by that point so opening up a parcel to reveal FIFA 64 left me almost certain that my dad had bought us the wrong game. Given that we had previously been told that we didn’t need a new ‘computer’, a Nintendo 64 was never on the cards for our household.

Seconds later, my eyes were drawn to a larger parcel below the tree. It couldn’t be, could it..?

Ripping the paper off revealed one of the best gifts I have ever received and one that I cherish to this very day.

This was INCREDIBLE! The N64 was sitting there before my very eyes, the same eyes that had lusted over pictures of Super Mario 64 and Mario Kart 64 for months. An additional green controller for multiplayer mayhem rounded off the surprise.

We hooked the console up to the TV in our living room and slotted FIFA 64 into the cartridge slot. This is going to be the BEST THING EVER!

As the game loaded up and we navigated through the menus, my brother and I picked out favourite teams and took to the pitch with massive grins on our faces.

This is the WORST THING EVER!

Don’t get me wrong. It was pretty amazing to see 3D visuals at home for the first time and to be getting to grips with the glorious N64 controller for the first time, even if I shied away from the analogue stick for a few months. The game, however, was absolutely horrendous.

My brother and I couldn’t tell if we were even playing the game or not due to how much of a delay there was between user input and action on the screen. As difficult and horrible as the game was to play, the real struggle came in trying to convince my dad, and ourselves, that it was great and way better than Super Soccer. I’m not sure if I ever told him the truth.