FIFA 97

FIFA 97
European PC cover featuring Newcastle United's David Ginola
Developer(s)EA Canada
Extended Play Productions
Perfect Entertainment (Saturn)
Rage Software (SNES)
XYZ Productions (Genesis)
Tiertex Design Studios (Game Boy)
Publisher(s)EA Sports
Black Pearl Software (Game Boy)
Composer(s)Graeme Coleman (Windows)
Michael J. Sokyrka
Joel Simmons
SeriesFIFA
EngineVirtual Stadium
Platform(s)Microsoft Windows
DOS
Game Boy
Mega Drive
SNES
PlayStation
Saturn
ReleaseDOS/Windows
PlayStation
  • EU: 16 November 1996
  • NA: 13 December 1996[2]
Genesis
  • NA: 20 November 1996
  • EU: October 1996
Saturn
  • NA: 20 March 1997
  • EU: 4 April 1997[3]
SNES
Genre(s)Sports
Mode(s)Single-player, multiplayer, multiplayer online

FIFA 97 (also known as FIFA Soccer 97) is a football simulation video game developed by EA Canada and published by Electronic Arts. It was released for PC on 24 June 1996 and versions for PlayStation, SNES, Mega Drive and Sega Saturn followed.

FIFA 97 is the fourth game in the FIFA series and the second to use the Virtual Stadium engine. Unlike the first game to use the engine, FIFA 97 features polygonal players as opposed to the 2D sprites used in FIFA Soccer '96. The engine however received complaints for being sluggish in the PC and PlayStation versions.

Frenchman David Ginola (then a Newcastle United player) was pictured on the cover of the game in the European market. He also was used for motion capture for the polygonal models in the game, while Brazilian Bebeto was featured on the cover for the Americas and Asia-Pacific markets.

  1. ^ "Online Gaming Review". 27 February 1997. Archived from the original on 27 February 1997. Retrieved 16 April 2023.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  2. ^ I. G. N. Staff (14 December 1996). "FIFA 97 Has Shipped". IGN. Archived from the original on 16 April 2023. Retrieved 16 April 2023.
  3. ^ "Checkpoint - Events And Software Releases". Computer and Video Games. No. 186. Future Publishing. May 1997. p. 48.