First released: 1995 (PC, PlayStation, Saturn)
Now available on: N/A
The FIFA series has led the way in the football simulation genre for several seasons now, but its position at the top of the league wasn't always so secure.
Before the days when Pro Evolution Soccer challenged the juggernaut franchise, EA Sports was looking nervously over its shoulder at Actua Soccer, a consistently innovative line of football games from Sheffield-based studio Gremlin Interactive.
Although FIFA '96 beat the original Actua Soccer to market as the first football game to feature 3D graphics, the Gremlin title's match engine was in a league of its own.
Released in 1995 for PlayStation, Sega Saturn and PC, the first Actua Soccer instalment was the only game around at the time offering an authentic full-3D experience with polygonal players.
While many of the game's console-based predecessors boasted 3D stadiums, even FIFA was still using flat 2D players back then - so the Gremlin game had the upper hand in terms of sheer immersion.
To heighten the title's authenticity, the development team enlisted the help of local club Sheffield Wednesday, which was more of a coup back then than it would be by today's standards.
Owls players Andy Sinton, Chris Woods and Graham Hyde provided motion capture work for the project to help further its realism, while commentary from Barry Davies boosted its authenticity from an audio standpoint.
This was the early days of audio commentary in football games, when the best we could hope for was a few disjointed speech segments and a player's name being called two minutes after he'd struck the ball, but the inclusion of Davies's distinctive vocals gave the game a technological edge nevertheless.
Actua Soccer did skimp on the number of playable sides, with only national teams represented in the original release. There were 44 playable nations, each with squads of 22 players.
FIFA's extensive team roster was enough to make Actua fans keel over with jealousy, but Gremlin took a small step towards levelling the playing field in 1996 with the release of Actua Soccer: Club Edition, which included all 20 Premier League sides.
Unable to compete with FIFA on the licensing front, Gremlin took the fight to EA Sports by focusing on gameplay and technological innovations (although they did manage to bag Alan Shearer as an ambassador for the second and third instalments).
Continuing the original's tradition of true 3D immersion, the PC version of Actua Soccer 2 came bundled with the Creative Technology's Voodoo 2 graphic card, a statement of intent that made it clear the game was a showcase for the latest graphical hardware.
The final entry in the series arrived in late 1998 - powered by an enhanced version of the Actua Soccer 2 engine with improved weather effects - and included an expanded roster comprised of both club sides and international teams.
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Actua Soccer 3 crammed in 25 leagues, 450 teams and more than 10,000 players, a bigger haul than any previous football game besides the sublime Sensible World of Soccer.
Reviews and sales figures remained stable throughout the Actua Soccer series' life cycle, but its demise came in the late 1990s when its rivals began to churn out fully-fledged 3D football sims of their own.
With EA Sports' World Cup 98 and FIFA 99 cracking the third dimension, Actua Soccer was no longer able to distinguish itself from its competitors and was relegated to non-existence.
Although Actua Soccer was unable to compete with money bags FIFA in the long run, it scored a hat-trick of hits with its core titles - and kept the mighty EA Sports on its toes for several years running.
Do you have any fond memories of Actua Soccer? Post a comment below!
