I am not a fan of football supporters who say “football was better in my day”, and “the game’s not what it used to be”. However, after I loaded up FIFA 20 a few days ago, I realised just how much I miss the older generations of football video games.

While I realise that is a slightly hypocritical statement, when I talk about longing for older style football games, I’m talking about just one in particular… FIFA 04. The top quality of FIFA games in my opinion, and whether that’s bias based on it being one of the first video games I properly remember playing, or the sheer amount of time I spent playing it through my childhood, it will always stand as my no.1 football video game.

In this post, I will be going through what I remember about the game, and a few of the reasons why I have so much nostalgia for it. Load up your GameCube, PS2 or XBOX and let’s get cracking.

Memory Lane

Okay, first of all let’s deal with the nostalgia element which is such a key reason behind my love of FIFA 04.

At a time when I first became properly aware and interested in both football and video games, FIFA 04 was my first football video game (although I have played older versions since then), and it gave me a chance to play out dream matches, lead my favourite club to dramatic victories and challenge my mates to some fiercely contested derbies.

Ultimately, the biggest perk and advantage of FIFA 04, ahead of other football video games, and the main nostalgic element is down to the sheer quality and amount of players in the prime of their career. Looking back at some of the players from 2003/2004, the list is endless of top-quality footballers, competing at their highest levels. In the Premier League, there was the likes of Henry, Lampard, Viera, Gerrard. And some upcoming talents of Cristiano Ronaldo and Wayne Rooney. Then, around Europe names such as Ronaldinho, Zidane, Kaka, Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos and Maldini. To be able to find these star players in Europe as I was properly becoming interested in football was fantastic. I know that you can pay hundreds of actual pounds to unlock some of these talents in Ultimate Team nowadays, but taking freekicks with the likes of Beckham and Roberto Carlos for Real Madrid doesn’t get any better than FIFA 04 for me.

I am aware that the nostalgia can trick opinion into remembering things better than they actually were. For example, I’ve gone back and played ‘GoldenEye’ and ‘Tony Hawks Pro-Skater’ with my 4k, PS5-ready expectations, only to realise that maybe they weren’t as playable as they were in the early 2000s. Despite this, I still will fight my corner for FIFA 04 as a classic, top-quality game. Should FIFA get sick of rinsing and repeating their current business model of yearly releases of identical games, I’ll happily pre-order a little remastered or re-released version of FIFA 04.

Go Get A ‘Real Job’

FIFA 04s career mode was a major overhaul and improvement on the entire video game series which is still a key selling point of their games even 15+ years later. In this version of the virtual management mode, EA introduced some big changes and developed the game-mode massively.

The career mode was, and always has been a personal favourite for myself as I am a big fan of ‘Football Manager’ in general, and so having aspects of that but being able to play the games ticks all the boxes for myself. And in 2004, the game began to actually feel somewhat realistic to managing my actual favourite club. Being able to set training sessions using their new ‘prestige point’ system and the objectives and transfer implications that the point system would have, meant that the season became more than just trying to win every game. There were objectives around not conceding X amount of goals etc. which added an extra element into the game.

Furthermore, in FIFA 04, there was also an introduction of ‘Football Fusion’, which for people who owned both FIFA 04 and Total Club Manager 2004, they could take their careers from the compete management simulation game into FIFA 04 and play out the games in control of the players. It was the ultimate combination of Football Manager and FIFA, and something that they decided not to continue much long after, which is a shame. For myself, I never owned both games at the same time and so I don’t recall ever trying out this game-mode, but if I can find a copy of Total Club Manager I’m very interested in trying it out.

I am definitely not claiming that FIFA 04s career mode is as detailed or well-rounded as the latest versions, however I truly believe that the developments to the game made in this version laid the groundwork and contributed massively to the career mode we have nowadays.

Banger After Banger

For an unashamed indie music fan like myself, there has never been a more perfect video game soundtrack than that of FIFA 04. To be fair to EA, their selection of tracks for loading screens and team selection decisions have always added to the feeling of playing the game, however in 04, they hit a peak of in-game music.

Some of the songs included in the track list include; Jerk It Out (Caesars), L.S.F. (Kasabian), Fools Gold (Stone Roses) and Town Called Malice (The Jam).

This collection of tracks added some atmosphere to heated debates between my mates of who would get the rubbish controller to use, and who I should put into the starting 11 for Manchester United between Eric Djemba-Djemba and some young guy called Cristiano Ronaldo. I wonder what ever happened to those two.

Set Piece Specialist

Looking at the image below reminded me of a major part of the gameplay from FIFA 04, the set pieces. Nowadays, the games are based around an immersive experience that’s meant to feel like you’re on the pitch, however in 2004, the game tried all of that but still remembered it was a video game at heart.

Because of the video game aspects, you had things like corners where you could select which player to aim for by pressing a specific button on the controller. It was always made a bit unrealistic by limiting the attacking players who you could get into the box to aim at, however it is slightly reminiscent of modern FIFA games, whereby you can select a specific player to aim for. I’ve read that some people didn’t particularly enjoy this style of corners for FIFA, however I personally enjoyed the little mini-game aspect of taking corners in this way.

Freekicks implemented this mini-game feel to some extent also, as you could select the type of freekick you were looking to take, as your player lined up the ball. Then if it was from a decent distance you could press a certain button to aim towards a specific player with a cross, or guide the ball into an area of the box. For a close-range direct freekick, you could add spin to the ball, and then specifically aim the shot with the little guide before letting fly.

Off the Ball was a key gameplay feature of FIFA 04, as you could now control a second player with the right analogue stick to improve creativity and running of your off the ball play. Trying this against your mate was redundant as the off ball controls were visually marked on the screen, however if against the computer you could pull off this technique of controlling the run of a second player whilst not being tackled, you could create some different passing combinations.

The final aspect of gameplay which I still slightly miss, comes from the commentary team of John Motson and Ally McCoist. Sure, the dialogue was repetitive and limited to a select few phrases, however that pairing of commentators surely has to go down as two of the greats. Motson provided the commentary of major football moments for generations, while McCoist popping up on occasional commentary duties nowadays always improves the games, with him filling breaks in play with historical facts and unrelated anecdotes.

Initial Reviews

I’ll finish up my love letter to an almost 20 years old video game by looking at some of the initial reviews and feedback the game got from its release in 2003.

On Metacritic, the game received 80+/100 across GameCube, PS1, PS2 and Xbox releases. Meanwhile, IGN reviewed the game at an average 8.5/10 across those platforms, calling it “Great”. Overall, the feedback was pretty positive for a FIFA game, and in the pre-ultimate team era, the game was a success. It sold well over 600,000 copies and picked up the British Academy Game Award for sports in 2003.

Whatever people liked/disliked about the game, and whatever people may think about the improvements of video game quality and production over the last 20+ years, NOBODY will convince me that FIFA 04 isn’t one of the best football video games that’s ever been released.

It really is “In the Game”.