FIFA 2000


FIFA 2000 is an association football video game developed by EA Canada and published by Electronic Arts. It was the seventh game in the main FIFA series. The game was released for Microsoft Windows and PlayStation. A version was also released for the Game Boy Color, developed by Tiertex Design Studios and published by THQ.

Game features

Among the innovations for this edition of the series was the ability to play over consecutive seasons, giving the possibility of competing for promotion or relegation and qualification for European Cup competition. The US Major League Soccer was officially licensed for the first time, and was used as a subtitle for the North American release.

Sound

Commentary in the UK English release is provided by BBC television commentators John Motson, Mark Lawrenson and Chris Waddle. The commentary was recorded in a London studio, however for the first time in the series Motson visited the games developers in Vancouver, Canada to provide insights into the intricacies of the real-life game. The US English release features commentary from Phil Schoen and Julie Foudy. Localised commentary exists for the German, Spanish, French, Italian, Hebrew, Japanese, Greek and Brazilian Portuguese releases.

Soundtrack

The game's theme music was Robbie Williams' "It's Only Us". As part of the agreement to licence the track EA Sports included Port Vale, the club Robbie Williams supports, in the game, despite only being in the third tier of the English football league system, which wasn't included as part of this game.

Reception

The game was met with positive reception, with the exception of the Game Boy Color version, which currently has a score of 47% on GameRankings; the site also gave the PlayStation version 87%, and the PC version 85%.
PlayStation Max awarded a gold rating to the game, praising the game's looks, sound and longevity, although they did criticise the ease with which it was possible to score goals. Official UK PlayStation Magazine went further with their criticism of the gameplay, believing the passing to be "too precise" and it being unrealistically easy to beat defenders. They did praise the level of detail in the game's graphics and the commentary and awarded the game a score of 7/10.
FIFA 2000s PlayStation version received a "Platinum" sales award from the Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers Association, indicating sales of at least 300,000 copies in the United Kingdom.