What will baseball be like in the year 2020?
Sega Genesis
Released in 1994 by Electronic Arts
Grade: D-
This game trades the beautiful aesthetics of America’s pastime for a glimpse into the future’s garish colors, metal architecture, and robotic athletes.
Where it falls in the series
While it’s based on an arcade from 1991, this game came out in 1994, a year after EA’s first crack at baseball, Tony La Russa Baseball. EA eventually settled on the Triple Play name for its simulation baseball series. These games all suck, and you can see my review of Triple Play 96 for the details.
Gripes
For robots and mechanically enhanced humans, these players don’t throw very fast. Pitches trudge slowly to the plate, curving any which way you please. Batting is simple, but don’t swing too hard; you might lace one over the left-field wall, only for it to bounce off a metal structure and back onto the field, in time for a fielder to throw you out at second base.
Rip a liner just left of third base and it’s a foul ball, but pop it up behind the plate and it bounces off a supercomputer into foul ground, and that’s … a base hit? Even with how our minds will evolve by the year 2020, that doesn’t make much sense.
Everything you do is scored in dollars. My team acquired 140 grand in five innings! I guess these players will make it rain at the robot nightclub, but who knows with inflation? $140,000 might only buy you a gin and robotonic.
Teams can use power-ups, and I don’t know what they do except add more colorful flashes to the scene. And the umpire adds “crackers” to the field as the game progresses, which explode like landmines if a player runs over them.
Under all this stupid nonsense is the same flawed gameplay that you get from all the other primitive baseball video games. In fact, it’s even worse, with braindead fielders, slow runners, and a zoomed-in view that makes the weird field design even more confusing.
Maybe this game seemed cool back in the day. For what it’s worth, my roommate saw me playing it and yelled, “Oh my god! I loved this game!” But I think it’s a case of game developers trying too hard and only entertaining themselves. Or maybe it’s some early 90s statement against steroids in baseball. Whatever the case, you can skip this one.