FIFA International Soccer (1993)
Audio Lead | Composer | Sound Design
This was the very first EA FIFA Soccer game. It drove us to push the audio tech on the Mega Drive/Genesis to beyond it’s normal abilities. Highlights of this game were the crowd chants while you played.
Soon after this version we did the SEGA CD version which could have CD quality music, so I took the songs from the Genesis version and redid them at MIDI CITY in Vancouver which was a studio I co-ran at the time.
Hi, I’ve been wondering what the crowds are actually chanting. Since your mind will always try and recognise something in the chants and I’m from Holland, when playing with friends we always thought that one of the chants was: “Kluivert, Kluivert, Kluivert! “. Would be nice to learn how/where the crowd chants were recorded.
My memory is a hazy on the details of that. I think EA had licensed some game footage from somewhere and I found a few moments in the game where the crowd was quite clear. I can’t remember which teams or even which country the footage was from. It would be interesting if anyone can recognise it.
I know it’s been a while, but i’m quite obsessed to learn about the quality of the 90’s, and I would like to ask you if you do remember, what keyboard(s) did you use to create the soundtracks of this game, because they sound quite professional for that time! I mean, the “FIFA Menu 1” sounds extremely well, as you combined an acoustic guitar with some electro-bass, lead guitar and some strings. The guitar parts sound really cool, and the rest sounds very realistic! Don’t mid for askind, i’m one of your greatest fans since Need for Speed II 😀
The cool guitar parts were played by Nik Chursinoff. I used to be in a band with him called the Drop Dolls. As for the synths I used a K2000 for strings, pads and percussion, Jupiter 6 for synth bass and S-550 for drums and loops. I sequenced it on a Mac running Performer. We had a Tascam 16 track half inch tape recorder synced to performer via smpte time code. The only thing recorded on tape was the guitars. I’d then set up all of the gear to play the song all at once, mix it live with no automation and record that straight on to DAT so that most of the music was captured first generation for the best quality. If I had recorded all of the synths to tape it would have lost a generation and some clarity. These were the good old days when gear used to be wired together in a patchbay (if you were lucky enough to have one). These days it’s all done on a single computer with no wires.
Did you work on the sound effects as well on the Sega CD version? I know it’s a long way back to remember, but what was it like getting the on-board sound chip on the Sega CD to work with the Genesis?
I heard about you through your interview with Legacy Music Hour, and I enjoyed hearing your comments on working with the Genesis and Snes sound processors. You were pretty limited trying to use the Genesis sampler, but it seems the sample quality(especially the crowd) was significantly better on the Sega CD.
We were super limited compared to how things are today. Although in some ways those limits forced us to be more creative. As for the Sega cd, it allowed us to play audio off of the cd at cd quality (quite mind blowing at the time). So we used the cd for the music (I got to re-record the genesis music in the studio), and we also used the CD for the crowds. That’s why the crowds sound much better than the genesis…and the snes for that matter.
I’d always imagined that the versions that appeared on the Sega Mega CD were the original compositions and had been down-converted or downsampled for the Mega Drive. Kudos for going back and re-imagining them! It must have been quite frustrating at the time working within 16-bit systems’ limitations.
I love the Fifa compositions on the Sega systems, although I’m not familiar with the Nintendo versions. I’d be interested to know what was used to create the music for them! I’m also glad to see you are still composing!
Best wishes,
John from Blackburn, Lancashire, England.
P.S. “The muffin lady is here everyone, the muffin lady is here!”
The muffin lady! Lol. I can’t remember for the life of me how to come across that sound clip. Do you remember at all?
It’s the final audio track on the Sega Mega CD version, it’ll play in any CD player. I don’t know if it appeared on the PC or 3DO versions, though.
These musics are awesome I loved them since I was a kid. I use them as my Fifa 13 custom tracks. Very good job, they never get old.
Seems like links to SNES version Menu 2 and below are bad. That’s so sad that you don’t share original Genesis music in mp3, although it might be impossible. I don’t like SNES versions at all since they’re not like Genesis ones. Fifa International Soccer was the first Genesis game with the music so cool that I became your fan at once.
Thanks for pointing out the broken links, those should be fixed now. I’ll see if I can record a decent version of the genesis versions 🙂
I still listen to the sega CD version to this day, love it.