FIFA: Road to World Cup 98

FIFA: Road to World Cup 98
British cover art featuring David Beckham
Developer(s)	EA Canada Extended Play Productions Climax Studios (Saturn) XYZ Productions (Mega Drive, SNES) Tiertex Design Studios (Game Boy)
Publisher(s)	EA Sports THQ (Game Boy)
Series	FIFA
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows Game Boy Mega Drive/Sega Genesis SNES Sega Saturn PlayStation Nintendo 64
Release	Microsoft Windows NA: June 17, 1997 EU: 1997 PlayStation EU: November 1997 NA: December 1, 1997 JP: May 14, 1998 Nintendo 64 NA: November 30, 1997 EU: December 20, 1997 JP: April 12, 1998 Game Boy NA: December 1997 EU: 1997 Mega Drive/Sega Genesis EU: 1997 SNES EU: 1997 Sega Saturn NA: December 17, 1997 EU: December 1997
Genre(s)	Sports
Mode(s)	Single player, Multiplayer, Multiplayer online

FIFA: Road to World Cup 98 (commonly abbreviated to FIFA 98) is an association football video game developed by EA Canada and published by Electronic Arts. It was the fifth game in the FIFA series and the second to be in 3D on the 32-bit machines. A number of different players were featured on the cover, including David Beckham in the UK, Roy Lassiter in the USA, Mexico and Brazil, David Ginola on the French cover, Raúl on the Spanish cover, Paolo Maldini on the Italian and Andreas Möller on the German cover. FIFA 98 was the last FIFA game released for the Mega Drive in Europe.

The game includes an official soundtrack and had a refined graphics engine, team and player customisation options, 16 stadiums, improved artificial intelligence and the popular Road to World Cup mode, with all 172 FIFA-registered national teams. No subsequent edition of the FIFA series had attempted to replicate FIFA 98's inclusion of every FIFA national team, up until 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa which included all 199 FIFA nations that took part in qualifying. With the new graphical improvements, players were able to have individual faces.

FIFA 98 even features many accurate team rosters, including national reserves for national call-up when playing in the round-robin qualification modes. In addition, eleven leagues were featured, containing 189 clubs. The game also featured a popular five-a-side indoor mode and was the first FIFA game to contain an in-game player/team editor.