PlayStation 1
Released in 1998 by 989 Sports
Grade: D
This game uses a dumb pitching interface, tipping off the location of every pitch. That’s reason enough not to spend time with it.
Where it falls in the series
There are eight installments on PS1, starting with MLB Pennant Race and ending with MLB 2005. After moving up to PS2, the name changed to The Show and became a way, way better game of baseball.
Gripes
When batting, you’re shown a ball icon that shows where every pitch is headed. This sounds like some kind of practice setting, but I assure you, there’s no option to turn this off.
Developers were fighting a losing battle making simulation baseball on this old console anyway, so I don’t know what else they could have done. The tiny ball is hard to track and moving your bat’s cursor feels clumsy on the old D-pad.
The rest of the action isn’t much better. Some strange things happen out in the field, like runners who are too fast and CPU fielders routinely making bad decisions.
The graphics are very grainy. Some animations are nice and fluid, but others are horribly stiff, so altogether it’s messy.
The pace of the game is slow too, making the bad pitching system even more unforgivable. I’m dumbfounded that the series stuck with it year after year.