Video Games
Posted on Nov 13, 2009 under Uncategorized |
Now I am going to begin by saying something many of you may find contentious – particularly those of you who are enamoured with the wonders of the equally popular PES franchise - but I love FIFA.
No, scratch that, I REALLY love FIFA!
I can still remember the first time I played it – how sad is that?
It was christmas 1995 and all I wanted that year was a Sega Mega Drive and a football game to play on it with my friends and family and now I finally had them both.
I was so excited that I could barely wait to connect it up to the big TV – what a treat!
Until that point I had had to make do with a Sega Master System and ‘World Cup Italia ‘90′ to play which was good fun but somewhat bizarre. The overhead view during the match of strange insect like men and then the equally bizarre penalty shoot-out where the moment you or one of your buddies pressed ’shoot’ the ball was practically in the net before you could blink with a strange rocket like sound almost impossible to save.
Now things were going to be different . . . I was joining the big boys now!
To say FIFA was a revelation would be the understatement of the year – particularly for someone used to an overhead view of the pitch and the players. Now, however, the pitch was on a slant so you could see the players with national teams and club sides not only in this country but also abroad. But, in addition, as opposed to the Master System’s 2-button pass and shoot controls with the Mega Drive I now had a third button to play with.
Could it really get any better than that?
It did not matter it was roughly impossible to dribble round your opponents or do anything other than a three of four pass move, from that moment I was hooked as I progressed from Mega Drive to Nintendo Playstation, from Playstation to Playstation 2, from – well, you get the idea!
Every year the new FIFA would come out and it would be bought for me (or when I got older I purchased it myself) regardless of the fact I now look back and laugh that I was usually getting the game simply because it meant the graphics had become slightly sharper or I would have the updated line-ups for the teams when the clubs and the football associations endorsed the game.
After all when Michael Owen got into the England team I had to have him in there didn’t I?
And yet, even though I now laugh at myself for having each and every edition of FIFA from 1995 to the previous year’s edition, I will still get this year’s edition as I could not be without it with the many memories of playing it with friends and family – along with the resulting rows!
So, finally, as you all know, it is my birthday tomorrow and in case you are pondering what to buy me (that means you Ed) I have been looking at that dvd set for Battlestar Galactica, just in case you couldn’t think of anything..