''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 association football, football competition contested by the List of men's national associatio ...

football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kick (football), kicking a football (ball), ball to score a goal (sports), goal. Unqualified, football (word), the word ''football'' generally means the form of football t ...

tournament hosted in

Portugal Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. Featuring Cabo da Roca, the westernmost point in continental Europe, Portugal borders Spain to its north and east, with which it share ...

. 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 a ...

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 imitated real-life sports networks by calling themselves the "EA Sports Network" (EASN) ...

. It was released for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

Xbox Xbox is a video gaming brand that consists of four main home video game console lines, as well as application software, applications (games), the streaming media, streaming service Xbox Cloud Gaming, and online services such as the Xbox networ ...

and

PlayStation 2 The PlayStation 2 (PS2) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on 4 March 2000, in North America on 26 October, in Europe on 24 Novembe ...

. 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 or Euros, is the primary association football tournament organised by the Union of European Football Associations (UEFA). The competition ...

and features all 51 national teams from the respective

qualifying round Qualification may refer to: Processes * Qualifications-Based Selection (QBS), a competitive contract procurement process established by the United States Congress * Process qualification, ensures that manufacturing and production processes can ...

. 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 association football, footballer who has since worked as a Manager (association football), manager and TV pundit. McCoist began his playing career with Scottish club St Jo ...

Gameplay

''UEFA Euro 2004'' uses a tweaked and improved version of the

graphics engine Rendering is the process of generating a photorealistic or non-photorealistic image from input data such as 3D models. The word "rendering" (in one of its senses) originally meant the task performed by an artist when depicting a real or imag ...

from '' FIFA 2004'' and introduces many new gameplay features and game modes to both the ''

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

'' and ''FIFA'' series.

UEFA national teams

The game includes the following playable national football teams: :

¹ Generic Kits

² Generic Names

Stadiums

The game contains the following selectable

venue A venue is the location at which an event takes place. It may refer to: Locations * Venue (law), the place a case is heard * Financial trading venue, a place or system where financial transactions can occur * Music venue, place used for a conce ...

Host Stadiums

* Aveiro Municipal * Braga Municipal * Coimbra Municipal *

Estádio Algarve The Estádio Algarve (') is an association football stadium located between Faro and Loulé municipalities, in the Algarve region of Portugal. The stadium has a total capacity of 30,305 spectators and was purposely built for the UEFA Euro 2004 ...

* D. Afonso Henriques * Dr. Magalhães Pessoa * Estádio José de Alvalade *

Estádio da Luz The Estádio da Luz (), officially named Estádio do Sport Lisboa e Benfica, is a multi-purpose stadium located in Lisbon, Portugal. It is used mostly for association football matches, hosting the home games of Portuguese club S.L. Benfica, Ben ...

* Estádio Dragão * Estádio Bessa

Other European Stadiums

Old Trafford Old Trafford () is a football stadium in Old Trafford, Greater Manchester, England, and is the home of Manchester United. With a capacity of 74,197, it is the largest club football stadium (and second-largest football stadium overall after W ...

San Siro San Siro is a football stadium in the San Siro district of Milan, Italy. It has a seating capacity of 75,817, making it the largest stadium in Italy and one of the largest stadiums in Europe. It is the home stadium of the city's principal ...

* Stadio delle Alpi *

Westfalenstadion Westfalenstadion (, ) is a football stadium in Dortmund, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, which is the home stadium of Borussia Dortmund. Officially called Signal Iduna Park for sponsorship reasons and BVB Stadion Dortmund in UEFA competitions, ...

Mestalla Mestalla Stadium ( , ) is a football stadium in Valencia, Spain. The stadium is the home of Valencia and has a capacity of 49,430 seats, making it the 8th-largest stadium in Spain, and the largest in the Valencian Community. The stadium's name o ...

Anfield Anfield is a Association football, football stadium in the area of Anfield (suburb), Anfield, Liverpool, England, which has been the home of Liverpool F.C. since its formation in 1892. The stadium has a seating capacity of 61,276, making it the ...

Parc des Princes The Parc des Princes (, ) is an all-seater stadium, all-seater football stadium in Paris, France. It is located in the south-west of the French capital, inside the 16th arrondissement of Paris, 16th arrondissement, near the Stade Jean-Bouin (P ...

Amsterdam Arena The Johan Cruyff Arena ( ; officially stylised as Johan Cruijff ArenA) is the main stadium of the Dutch capital city of Amsterdam and the home stadium of association football, football club AFC Ajax, Ajax since its opening. Built from 1993 to ...

* Félix Bollaert * Hamburg Arena

Generic Stadiums

* Open Square Style * Oval Style * Euro 1 * Euro 2 * European Training³ * Portuguese Training³ :

³ Exclusive for "Practice" mode

Development

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

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

UEFA The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA ; ; ) is one of six continental bodies of governance in association football. It governs football, futsal and beach soccer, beach football in Europe and the List of transcontinental countries#A ...

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.

Soundtrack

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 Wale ...

-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 and ratings of products and services, such as films, books, video games, music, software, hardware, or cars. This system then stores the reviews to be used for supporting a website where user ...

website

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

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 ''IGN'' is an American video gaming and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa district and is headed by its former e ...

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 Frame rate, most commonly expressed in frame/s, or FPS, is typically the frequency (rate) at which consecutive images (Film frame, frames) are captured or displayed. This definition applies to film and video cameras, computer animation, and moti ...

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