But that would put FIFA up against the official World Cup game from rival publisher fifa 14 coins US Gold. McMillan recalls: “I said to the team: ‘We need to beat them to market. We need to be on the shelf for Chrismas. ’ So the team just aspired to that. We shrunk our schedule dramatically and worked around the clock. I remember in our old studio we had a kitchen downstairs and I remember Joey Della Savia making spaghetti for the team. I mean we were working 16 hour days. “You’d see people at eight in the morning, because we were working on UK time, too. We would be giving builds to the UK for feedback. We’d do this right through the Spring and Summer to hit our deadlines.
We were exhausted but inspired because every day the game got better. It was just an exhilarating experience. “When I called the team into the boardroom and told them we had to be out by Christmas, I said: ‘This is going to be really hard but I can assure you this is going to be something you will remember for the rest of your lives. ’ And I know that kind of speech is corny but it kind of turned out to be true. ”Meanwhile, across the pond in the UK, hype was building rapidly. Neil T was busy promoting the title, taking the latest code out to the press: “There was no beta or alpha back then, normally you’d just show the full product. But it looked so good in development that we did sneak previews for the press. We showed them and they went bonkers. Then the sales predictions went up. The US didn’t have high hopes for it, but we had huge expectations. ”
Webster adds: “Our PR guy was saying that the reviews were going to come back extraordinarily strong and that Virgin Sensible Soccer publisher was worried. It even delayed its game because the team there knew we were going to hit really strong. ”Sales expectations for FIFA were rising. The game was looking great. All the team needed now was someone to put on the box. “We contacted the agent of David Platt, who was a real star at the time, ” explains Stone. “We had David Platt come to the office and we were all suitably star struck because, you know, the games industry in those days didn’t have stars. ”Webster remembers that day well: “It was when he had done his ankle www.fifacoinsworld.co.uk in, and I happened to have injured my cruciate ligament and had an operation.