PlayStation 1
Released in 2004 by 989 Sports
Grade: D+
One day, I went to an Indian restaurant and decided I wanted something other than chicken tikka masala. It’s the only Indian dish I know, and it’s good, but I figured I’d try something else, something I never heard of. Well, it was horrible. I couldn’t finish it. I felt guilty, because I could tell it was well-made and with good ingredients. But there were some other ingredients that didn’t hit my tastebuds right. That’s what this game is like. The bad ingredients spoil the whole dish.
Where it falls in the series
It’s the ninth and last of Sony/989 Sports’ baseball series on PS1, which started with MLB Pennant Race in 1996, then MLB 98, and yearly releases since. PS2 versions started with MLB 2004. The name changed to The Show in 2006, and it’s now the undisputed king of simulation baseball video games.
Praises and gripes
Here are the good ingredients: the batting viewpoint is right (there are a few choices, but the default is best), pitchers throw real pitches and choose a pitch location, the swing is responsive and fluid, and the action in the field is fast and natural. Oh, and the sound is good.
What’s the problem? This game’s batting interface has one of the oddest traits, where you’re shown the pitch location before the pitch is thrown. You read that right. The game tips off every single pitch.
This sounds like a “training wheels” mode to help you learn to hit, and you’ll eventually play without seeing the pitch location ahead of time, but nope. You can’t turn this off. There’s a “guess pitch” feature and three difficulty levels, but that little icon shows up regardless.
This means that batting comes down to timing, which is quite difficult anyway. Breaking balls don’t break much, they just go slower.
It gets more frustrating. This game gives umpires a lot of leeway calling balls and strikes. If it’s close, there’s no telling what the ump will call. I never liked that feature. In more modern games where this is an option to be turned on or off, I always opt for the ump to make the right call. If I’m going to spend time honing my eye for a clump of white pixels, I don’t want to get robbed by an umpire who’s making the wrong calls.
Like many baseball games I’ve been reviewing, I’d like to know how intricate the batting logic is, but I don’t want to have to find out myself. There aren’t any pitch diagrams like in later baseball games to help you analyze patterns.
The rest of the action plays out pretty well. Fielders move and throw swiftly, although you’re sure to miss a few routine fly balls when you’re not in the precise right spot for the catch.
The graphics are as choppy as you can expect on PS1, which is much more offputting for baseball than it is for other sports. In baseball, you’ve got a close view of the batter and you’re trying to keep your eye on a tiny white ball. Plus, by the time this game came out, gamers were already used to the PS2 and Xbox. I think game developers should have used 2D sprites for baseball in those days.
All in all, you’ve got to really have a hankering for PS1 baseball to spend time with this.