FIFA Football 2002,[a] commonly known as FIFA 2002 and known in North America as FIFA Soccer 2002: Major League Soccer, is a football video game released in 2001, produced by Electronic Arts and released by EA Sports. FIFA 2002 is the ninth game in the FIFA series.
Power bars for passes were introduced, and dribbling reduced in order to attain a higher challenge level. The power bar can also be customised to suit the gamer's preference. The game also includes club emblems for many more European clubs as well as for major Dutch clubs such as PSV, AFC Ajax and Feyenoord, although there was no Dutch league of any kind (they were under the "Rest of World" header). This game also features, for the first time, the Swiss Super League, at the cost of excluding the Greek League. A card reward system licensed from Panini was also introduced where, after winning a particular competition, a star player card is unlocked.
Similar to FIFA 98, this game features a Road to the World Cup game mode featuring the real-life format of each qualification zone as well as every team that had participated in it (except Oceania), however the World Cup itself is not featured, either as part of the mode or as its own mode. If the player chooses any nations that had automatically qualified for the 2002 FIFA World Cup (i.e. France, Japan, and South Korea), the player is instead tasked with improving their FIFA ranking through international friendlies. As a bonus for qualifying from each region, the game will unlock continental cups from said region (marking the only time they appear in a FIFA game, except for the UEFA Euro), winning each regional cup would give the player a Panini card featuring star players from each continent. Once the player unlocks and wins all of the regional cups, the game will unlock the FIFA Confederations Cup as a bonus (also the only time it appears in a FIFA game).
However, most of the international teams featured in the game are not licensed (some of them down to the players' names like the Netherlands), while smaller countries such as Barbados, were only given numbers as player names. To date, this was the last FIFA edition (not counting the World Cup versions) to feature the Japan national team, since Japan Football Association would go on to concede exclusive rights to Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer series. Also, this was the final FIFA edition to feature the Israel Premier League and its teams.
France and Arsenal star Thierry Henry is featured as the cover star. FIFA Football 2002 is the last FIFA for 10 years to only have one person as the cover star, before Lionel Messi appeared alone on FIFA 13.
Gary Whitta reviewed the PlayStation 2 version of the game for Next Generation, rating it four stars out of five, and stated that "With improved tactics and graphics, FIFA 2002 once again cements itself at the top of the virtual soccer universe."[24]
The game was met with positive reception. GameRankings and Metacritic gave it a score of 82% and 77 out of 100 for the PC version;[30][34] 81% and 81 out of 100 for the GameCube version;[29][33] 79% and 81 out of 100 for the PlayStation version;[31][35] and 79% and 82 out of 100 for the PlayStation 2 version.[32][36] In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of 34 out of 40 for the GameCube version,[7] and 32 out of 40 for the PS2 version.[8]
^Kato, Matthew (December 2001). "FIFA Soccer 2002 (PS2)". Game Informer. No. 104. p. 93. Archived from the original on 24 February 2005. Retrieved 30 March 2015.
