The baseball season is in full swing and after a few years of my baseball fandom fading away, I've begun following the MLB and my beloved New York Yankees again for the 2016 season. The Yankees stink, but I'm also fortunate enough to live close to one of the nicest minor league parks in the country, that being the Dell Diamond of the Texas Rangers' farm club, the Round Rock Express. So as I rekindle my love for America's pastime, I've decided to take a look at some of the baseball games in my collection throughout the generations. Though I typically don't collect sports games, my game library is peppered with some of the better baseball titles from the past. I am by no means contending these to be the best baseball games from each generation, they are simply the ones I own because I happen to enjoy them quite a bit. Let's play ball!




Baseball Stars - NES - The arcade version of SNK's Baseball Stars is, as with most SNK games of the era, a masterpiece of color and sprite art. The NES version, despite the requisite downgrade in graphical quality, is one of the best baseball games on the NES. The gameplay is solid, the music is great, and Baseball Stars was one of the first sports games to use a save battery to make playing entire seasons a reality. It is also noteworthy for the ability to put female players on one's team using the custom roster option.


Super Baseball Simulator 1.000 - SNES - Most people will tell you that the Ken Griffey Jr series of games for the SNES are some of the best baseball titles of all time. Even within my SNES collection however, only one baseball title is available, and despite the name it is actually anything but a simulator. To put it simply, in this game, pitchers as well as batters have a finite number of Mario Kart style power-ups at their disposal known as "Ultra Swings" and "Ultra Pitches." These can do anything from making the ball travel in unpredictable patterns to making the ball become invisible, to making the ball hit the ground with such force that it stuns opposing players. This game features some great music and the Ultra's can be laugh out loud funny at times. This game is great for multiplayer.


World Series Baseball 2K2 - DC - As with most Sega sports games, the presentation here is top-notch for the most part. World Series Baseball 2K2 offers many modes of play that are now familiar fare for any sports simulation game with everything from exhibition to full 162 game seasons. The graphics are pretty smooth, but there seem to be a finite number of stock models for the payers themselves. I laughed when Derek Jeter came to bat sporting a beard. The commentary is great, but not nearly as good as its NFL2K brothers. At times, the commentary is inaccurate. On one easy single for example, the commentator exclaimed "That's extra bases!" What I loved about this game is that everything is quite intuitive. This is an early modern baseball simulation that still carries many arcade-like qualities like aiming the bat (or pitch) with the left stick.   


MLB Power-Pros - Wii - This long running Japanese series of games finally made it to North America in 2007 on the Wii and PS2. Despite the cartoonish character models and cel-shaded graphics, MLB Power Pros is by far the deepest baseball video game I have ever played. It boasts full MLB team and player licences. All the expected game modes are available, but there is also an amazingly deep manager mode where the player controls everything from what equipment the team uses, to which players train together, which can boost morale and lead to wins if done correctly. If you want a sports game with detailed RPG-esque systems, look no further. I enjoy playing the game on Wii because it does support motion controls and I find playing the home run derby mode that way to be incredibly fun. There is a sequel called MLB Power-Pros 2008 on the Wii, but I do not have that one in my collection yet. 


The BIGS - 360 - I remember playing a demo of this game when I first bought an XBox 360, and I thought it was really cool. I picked up a copy to review for this article, thinking it would round out my baseball collection for a modern console, but what I played was an exercise in frustration. The BIGS tries to channel what made the Midway sports titles like NBA Jam and NFL Blitz so much fun in the 90s. Realism is left by the wayside in lieu of cartoon-ish super powered action. The problem, for me at least, is that this game feels completely unbalanced. In a five inning game, I couldn't muster more than a single offensively, but I felt like every pitch I threw was knocked out of the park by the opposition. I probably need to spend more time with this game, but my initial impression is not great.   

I remember a time when I thought that all baseball games were bad. I have to believe this is based on the fact that my appreciation of the real life sport did not come to me until my early twenties. Looking back on these games, I can confidently say that there are some great titles out there. Having said that, which ones did I miss? What are some of your favorite baseball video games? Which ones should I add to my collection?

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