I’ve been a big baseball fan for the last four years. It’s hard to live in Boston and not be. That said, I’ve never had much of a desire to purchase or even play a baseball video game. I took a couple of cracks at RBI Baseball for the NES back in the day and more recently killed some time with the surprisingly good Pete Rose Baseball for Atari 2600. That was about the extent of my baseball gaming experience though until a few weeks ago when Brixtone and I opened up NCAA MVP ‘06. Things have changed a lot since 1988.

First of all, I dig the analog batting and fielding control. It’s not perfect, but it does a good job making you feel connected to the action on screen. They also haven’t perfected the dynamic of two players using the same screen (and they never will) but having the controller vibrate when you’ve moved your pitching cursor out of the strike zone is a pretty effective way to hide your location from the batter while giving the pitcher aim control. I can think of better ways to do this, but they have drawbacks. The easiest thing would be to allow separate points of view when using two screens either on the PC or using linked Xboxs. Another possibility would be to make use of a controller that has a display such as the Dreamcast controller to locate your pitches. Does anyone know if this was done on any Dreamcast baseball games? With the Wii remote you could aim at the strike zone as long as the batter wasn’t watching you.

The batting is also problematic. I’ve been playing Triple Play 2002 at home which does not use analog control but instead has a target that you aim in the batter’s box. There is a red circle in the center the box indicating your power zone which is bigger for home run hitters like Manny, and the rest of the target is for contact. This works pretty well except that you know the general area of the pitch before it’s thrown. At least in the single player mode, if the ball cursor is on the edge of the plate it’s a safe bet that the pitch will be a ball. The strategy comes in predicting the type of pitch and favoring your power zone to one side or the other of the ball cursor. While the target-less analog method of MVP ‘06 is more realistic, I never feel like I’m aiming my bat because the motion is all done on one analog stick. I think they should use both sticks; one for the timing and power of the swing, the other to aim the bat. I also miss the ability to move the batter in the box and change his stance like you can in Triple Play. Again, the Wii remote can do wonders for baseball video games by giving you the ability to actually swing something; though Sega had a bat controller for the Genesis game “Batter Up”. Does anyone here know if it was any good?

In every sports game, there has to be a balance between a game that is realistic and a game that is fun. In baseball this is crucial because the sport itself can often be slow and boring. Triple Play errs on the side of entertaining with fast transitions to keep the game moving, but allows too many unrealistic, excitement enducing plays such as picking off a runner at first (I did this three times in one game and two of them were Ichiro). I felt like MVP ‘06 was maybe too realistic especially when it came to batter transitions. You have to sit and wait for the batter’s pre box routine before each pitch and while being realistic, it is also frustratingly slow. I should have the option to skip this routine by pressing “A”.

Granted, I’m an extreme newbie to the baseball video game genre but have been having a lot of fun so far. I played Triple Play 2002 for about five hours straight the other day… Can anyone recommend some good modern baseball titles to try out? Any classics? I’ll write more as I investigate further .