Waffle, Fifa, controllers.... Stuffz.

About once a month or so there is a small family gathering for a dinner out, recent years has seen this happen in a specific restaurant that accommodates location and tastes for all involved.
Despite the usual crowds that go there for birthdays and other family celebrations there are gatherings of all ages; There are also a lot of business people. It really is a restaurant that caters to a wide variety of customers; Not least because the owner also owns a hotel that is and yet not connected/co-located. Long story short the table next to use had two business gents discussing in a loud enough manner about real world soccer players. Not in the way people talk about stats and last night's match but about scouting soccer players, arranging to meet and see them in action. I have never been into sports and definitely not in a participating way. It did get me thinking about the Fifa games I've played. Sports related eh... eh.... see I had a reason for all the waffle.

Before getting a PC I played Fifa '95 on a cousins Megadrive (Genesis), a vastly different experience to the PC '97 version. The PC versions I did play seemed to cover a particular time period and were:

FIFA 97,
World Cup 98,
FIFA 99,
FIFA 2000,
FIFA 2002,
World Cup 2002,
FIFA 2003.

I have no idea why I followed the franchise for those years other than to say I must have enjoyed them for the gameplay. It's not like I'm a massive soccer fan.... Not at all.

For me at least, the Fifa Version's were the ones to play, not least because Pro Evo (PES) seemed to be aimed more for the playstation at that time and I'm an Xbox/PC gamer.

I did get to reload and relive Fifa '97; it made me cringe hard at it's graphics and interface. Reliving the nostalgia didn't take long to make me move along.

 

With nostalgia out of the way I turned my attention to the latest version of the game, Fifa '17.

It seems synchronicity strikes again, 1997 and 2017, the first and the latest I've looked at a Fifa game on PC. 20 years apart. I feel old. This new version has a lot more detail in game systems never mind the graphics. But the trial didnt' last long for me either. I felt the game was too detailed. Too many button combinations in different situations. It didn't feel intuitive or easy to learn. I ended up doing what I do in Street Fighter games, button mash. Fifa didn't allow for a dumbed down version and I wasn't bothered with it to stick to leaning it. The new "story" mode is a great addition.

My game style now seems to be more aimed at a management sim rather than as a gamer playing the matches (I never got Football manager '16 but I heard it was great, FM '17 by all accounts was a disaster). With FM '18 due out this November it will be interesting to see what they have learnt, if anything.

I'm also interested in Sociable Soccer made by the designers of sensible soccer which was king in it's day. The new version seems to be less about simulation and more about arcadey fun.....

Sociable Soccer

All of this has also got me thinking about the controllers I've used over the years. I wont' go into too much detail but the late 90's saw me get these:

The Logic 3 Swift Pad, cheap at the time, a pad that did the job, no style points here.

Followed in short order by the Playstation rippoff Gamepad Pro from Gravis. Better at the job and with the Playstaion feel. It was an upgrade.

But being on a PC more buttons were required. With my gamplay also moved into space/flight games.... Wing Commander 3, 4 and prophecy, Privateer 2, Freespace 1 and 2......
The Gravis Xterminator was needed and proved to last the test of time until I got a 360 controller setup for pc.

 

I had both the 'normal' and digital versions. Both were compatible with each other and could be daisy chained to a single gameport on a sound card or separately if you had a gamecard installed.

I used both methods but when getting the digital version I also got an ISA gamecard (ThrustMaster ACM Game Card game controller adapter).

All a blast from the past....

Today even with an some Xbox One controllers in the house I default back to the 360 controller's on PC.