''UEFA Euro 2004'' is the official licensed video game of

UEFA Euro 2004 The 2004 UEFA European Football Championship, commonly referred to as Euro 2004, was the 12th edition of the UEFA European Championship, a quadrennial football competition contested by the men's national teams of UEFA member associations. The ...

football tournament hosted in

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic ( pt, República Portuguesa, links=yes ), is a country whose mainland is located on the Iberian Peninsula of Southwestern Europe, and whose territory also includes the Atlantic archipelagos of ...

. The game was developed by

EA Canada EA Vancouver (formerly known as EA Burnaby, then EA Canada) is a Canadian video game developer located in Burnaby, British Columbia. The development studio opened as Distinctive Software in January 1983, and is also Electronic Arts's largest and ...

and published by

EA Sports EA Sports is a division of Electronic Arts that develops and publishes sports video games. Formerly a marketing gimmick of Electronic Arts, in which they tried to imitate real-life sports networks by calling themselves the "EA Sports Network ...

. It was released for Microsoft Windows,

Xbox Xbox is a video gaming brand created and owned by Microsoft. The brand consists of five video game consoles, as well as applications (games), streaming services, an online service by the name of Xbox network, and the development arm by the ...

and PlayStation 2. It is the second game from EA Sports based on the quadrennial

UEFA European Championship The UEFA European Football Championship, less formally the European Championship and informally the Euro, is the primary association football tournament organised by the Union of European Football Associations ( UEFA). The competition is conte ...

and features all 51 national teams from the respective

qualifying round Qualification is either the process of qualifying for an achievement, or a credential attesting to that achievement, and may refer to: * Professional qualification, attributes developed by obtaining academic degrees or through professional exper ...

. The

commentary Commentary or commentaries may refer to: Publications * ''Commentary'' (magazine), a U.S. public affairs journal, founded in 1945 and formerly published by the American Jewish Committee * Caesar's Commentaries (disambiguation), a number of works ...

is provided by

John Motson John Walker Motson (10 July 1945 – 23 February 2023) was an English football commentator. Beginning as a television commentator with the BBC in 1971, he commentated on over 2000 games on television and radio. From the late 1970s to 2008, Mo ...

and

Ally McCoist Alistair Murdoch McCoist, (; born 24 September 1962) is a Scottish former footballer who has since worked as a manager and TV pundit. McCoist began his playing career with Scottish club St Johnstone before moving to English side Sunderland in ...

Gameplay

''UEFA Euro 2004'' uses a tweaked and improved version of the graphics engine from '' FIFA 2004'' and introduces many new gameplay features and game modes to both the '' UEFA Euro'' and ''FIFA'' series.

Development

Electronic Arts Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the ...

made the game's development public on February 6, 2004, when it announced that it had signed an agreement with

UEFA Union of European Football Associations (UEFA ; french: Union des associations européennes de football; german: Union der europäischen Fußballverbände) is one of six continental bodies of governance in association football. It governs f ...

to develop, publish and distribute the official game based on

championship that would begin on June 12 of that same year in Portugal. The game was developed by EA Canada, the studio behind the development of the ''FIFA'' series of video games. For the soundtrack, the developers specifically chose

rock Rock most often refers to: * Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids * Rock music, a genre of popular music Rock or Rocks may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...

-based tracks due to the genre's big resurgence in Europe at the time.

Reception

''UEFA Euro 2004: Portugal'' received "generally favorable reviews" on all platforms except the Xbox version, which received "average" reviews, according to the

review aggregation A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...

website

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

GameSpot ''GameSpot'' is an American video gaming website that provides news, reviews, previews, downloads, and other information on video games. The site was launched on May 1, 1996, created by Pete Deemer, Vince Broady and Jon Epstein. In addition ...

favored its gameplay and options in comparison to '' FIFA 2004'' and praised the Windows version in particular for the improved visuals and online multiplayer. IGN specially praised the sound design of the game, stating that "the commentary is spot-on and not often repetitive, as we've come to expect. What's really impressive, however, is the crowd noise. Country-specific chants are a nice touch, and the din of the crowd overall is synched well with the action on the field." However, the PlayStation 2 version was criticized for its inferior graphics, frame rate issues, and lack of

online multiplayer A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system ( couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, or ...

when compared to the

and PC versions respectively.

Sales

''UEFA Euro 2004: Portugal'' was a commercial success, selling over one million units during the first month after release.

References

External links

* * * * {{portalbar, Video games, Association football 2004 video games Cancelled GameCube games Cancelled Game Boy Advance games Cancelled N-Gage games Windows games Xbox games PlayStation 2 games Association football video games Electronic Arts games EA Sports games Video games developed in Canada UEFA Euro 2004 Video games set in 2004 Video games set in Europe Video games set in Portugal FIFA (video game series) UEFA European Championship video games