PlayStation 2
Released in 2002 by Midway
Grade: C+
This over-the-top game tries its hardest to inject an arcade levity to baseball, but it lacks gameplay dynamics and wears out its welcome quickly.
Where it falls in the series
It’s the first of four Slugfest games. Midway gave up on baseball, and 2K Sports quickly filled the arcade baseball void with two The Bigs games.
Praises and gripes
At first glance, this has everything I’d want in arcade baseball. It’s fast and the mechanics favor hitting, but it still has enough baseball-like dynamics, such as a pitching interface that gives you an arsenal of real pitches. The graphics sparkle by PS2 standards, and the announcers provide constant cheesiness.
Pitchers choose from four pitch types and aim their pitch, but as the instructions tell you, every pitch is hittable. You can’t direct your pitch out of the strike zone, yet some pitches will somehow be called balls. Whatever, don’t overthink it, the point is that you’re supposed to swing at almost anything. The main challenge at the plate is timing. Breaking balls have wacky, exaggerated movement, and pitchers can add turbo to pitches to mix up the speeds. You can add some oomph on hits if you aim your swing just right, but with these wacky pitches, good luck honing your eye at the plate.
Hitters can also use turbo, as can fielders and runners, and frankly, using turbo is your most impactful strategic consideration. You start each half-inning with a full turbo bar. You really don’t need to be very choosy about when to use it. You’ve got plenty of it, and your biggest mistake would be to let it go to waste.
Other gimmicky dynamics include players going “on-fire” and the choice to plunk hitters with a pitch to knock their attributes down.
The rest of the gameplay mechanics work okay. Pitching is simple but frustrating, because hitters hit everything. Batting is simple, but it feels like a crapshoot whether your hits end up going into a gap or straight to a fielder. Fielding and running the bases, again, come down to using the turbo button. There’s some added chaos on the basepaths, as runners can punch fielders to jar the ball loose, but a competent opponent will usually retrieve the ball and throw you out.
All of this sounds fun and extravagant, but the whole thing gets tiresome and repetitive quickly. It’s fun to pick up and play with a friend for a short while, but even arcade sports games should have some dynamics borrowed from the actual sport. The meat and potatoes of a baseball video game, even one as silly as this, is pitching and hitting, which are dumbed down too far here. There’s nothing to it. It’s ALL bells and whistles.