Fifa 99 PS1 Review

FIFA 99 would be the next installment in the iconic football series that saw a release at the end of 1998 and it would be published on Windows PC, PlayStation and also on the Nintendo 64. 

And this game will go through many vast improvements that would have been a drastic overhaul compared to what was seen in both FIFA 98 road to World Cup and even the FIFA World Cup 98 installments that have been released previously. 

Graphically there would have been many improvements and aesthetics with the use of better visuals even more lifelike features with the likes of the character models of the players with improved gameplay speeds and just generally just better visuals overall that try to make the game feel more lifelike. 

The quality of the game was just a general all-round Improvement compared to the previous games in the series. One major difference compared to the likes of especially FIFA 98 was the removal of the indoor soccer mode which was a very popular feature within that game and for myself personally it was one of the best features that I consider to be in FIFA 98 and was even also in FIFA 97. So it was an unusual choice to remove that from the next installment. 

But in place of that they added in more teams, more tournaments that you could play as all with your favorite teams and even the current player stats of that time that you could play as some of the best players in Europe and even in the world. 

The game would also receive many favorable reviews pretty much on all platforms according to magazines and would become a UK best seller that would actually knock Tomb Raider 3 off the top selling spot during the early stages of 1999 because at that point with the success previously of FIFA 98, FIFA had quickly risen to the dominance of soccer games within the football genre. 

While you also had the ISS Pro Series from Konami which were also fantastic football games in their own right, unfortunately where FIFA held its own was the fact that they had access to all of the licenses from all of the clubs in the countries where they had all of the official player stats for each season for each iteration of the game that they created plus there was a gradual improvement with each of the games that you actually see through each generation of the game for each year that it was released. 

But with the ISS pro games it would take a number of years before they would be able to acquire any sort of licenses for team names and players in general and in a lot of cases that's what would have given advantage to the FIFA Series in general because the majority of football fans would have wanted to play with their official teams or the teams that they support and to have access to all of the proper character stats and influences that would have been available at that time so that would have had more selling appeal for the games during that period and even just primarily in general. 

So it's easy to see why FIFA just pretty much sold by the bucket load each and every year especially after FIFA 98 on the PlayStation that's pretty much every version of the game just sold loads of copies even up until the launch of the PlayStation 2 and even its dominance was still prevalent even on that console for many number of years even until the likes of the PS3 when the pro evo series would start to catch up and have access to various licenses and so forth so that they would nearly be on the same level as the FIFA Series in terms of even sales to a certain degree. 

But FIFA would always have the upper hand and would always have the bigger fan base in terms of the amount of chances that they would have to sell games as more often than not especially back in those days people would tend to always pick FIFA over the ISS Pro Series anyway and mainly due to the fact because of those reasons that I described but at the same time many gamers didn't even know about ISS Pro or didn't even know about any other soccer games because FIFA was literally everywhere when every time you go into a game store you would see copies of FIFA literally flooding the shelves regardless of which version or year. 

If there wasn't the newest or latest version of FIFA on the new shelf list there was always copies or secondhand copies of older titles like FIFA 98, FIFA 97, FIFA World Cup 98 and so forth all was found in discounted shelves. 

There where literally just FIFA games everywhere so you couldn't not miss it. It was just so heavily publicized and was just it literally was everywhere so quite naturally it just sold in numbers across the board. 

But all in all FIFA 99 is a great title in its own right and in terms of its playable characteristics and features it does actually play better than FIFA 98. 

It is more responsive and it does have a lot going for it. Now I will admit, my own personal preference is FIFA 98 because it was the one that really got me into the series and I love the indoor features and I think just the overall vibe because it was again it was leading up to the likes of the World Cup at that time. 

It just had unique presence of it that hadn't been seen in a football game after that so FIFA 99 really just extended upon that if anything but it's still a really good game in its own right and it's still a fan favorite amongst many players that still hold it in high regard even to this day and I would love to know your thoughts on FIFA 99 for the PlayStation one if you have played it yourself back in the day. 

Would this be one of your favorite FIFA games in the series that you've played over the years and if so what do you think of the game overall? 

I'd love to hear whatever stories you do have with the game so be sure to share it in the comments below and be sure to keep watching to see more content on other games similar to FIFA 99, you can check out the blog where we will be diving into the iconic elements of these classic video games and as always keep those gaming memories alive...