The current selection of top baseball games are published by the majors including Interplay (recently halted a new version of baseball), Microsoft, Acclaim, and 3DO and Electronic Arts.
Interplay published VR Baseball, which was last published as Interplay Sports Baseball 2000. Microsoft’s offering is MS Baseball 2001 for Win-dows. EA Sports, which proclaimed “We are Sports,” has their studio 3DO and its head, Trip Hawkins, publishing High Heat Baseball 2002 for Win-dows, the PlayStation 2 (High Heat Baseball 2003 for PSX 2 E), and Gameboy Advance (both in 2002 and 2003 versions). EA’s predecessor baseball offering was Triple Play Baseball. Acclaim has their All Star Base-ball for 2002 and 2003 for the Game Cube, PSX 2, and Microsoft’s Xbox.
n Interplay Sports Baseball 2000
Interplay VR Baseball 2000 Windows CD $9.95 Interplay Sports Baseball 2000 Windows $29.95 n Microsoft’s Baseball 2001
MS Baseball 2000 CD Sports $18.95 MS Baseball Slugfest XBOX Sports $49.95 n EA Triple Play Baseball
Triple Play Baseball CD Sports $24.95 n EA/3DO High Heat Baseball 2002 and 2003
High Heat Baseball 2002 W95 CD Sports $24.95 High Heat Baseball 2002 PSX 2 T Sports $29.95 High Heat Baseball 2002 PSX 2 E Sports $29.95
High Heat Baseball 2002 Gameboy Advance E Sports $39.95 High Heat Baseball 2003 PSX 2 E Sports $49.95
High Heat Baseball 2003 Gameboy Advance Sports $39.95 n Acclaim All Star Baseball 2002 and 2003
All Star Baseball 2002 Game Cube E Sports $49.95 All Star Baseball 2002 PSX 2 E Sports $48.95 All Star Baseball 2003 Game Cube Sports $49.95 All Star Baseball 2003 PSX 2 Sports $49.95 All Star Baseball 2003 Xbox Sports $49.95 Interplay Sports Baseball 2000
Let’s examine Interplay’s Baseball 2000 in terms of its good aspects, bad aspects, and suggested improvements.
Good: Baseball 2000 has good AI that focuses on pitches that the batter will want to hit and will inten-tionally walk a batter. The fielding option is very good, and the program controls the fielder until the
camera has the fielder in full view and then the player takes control. The game player has no need for exactness when fielding a ball or throwing to a base. Fielding a ball requires a general area click on a player, and the ball jumps into the glove. The pitching and batting interface is easy to use and has an optional strike zone and an option after the throw to display where the ball was pitched.
This version has better graphics than last year (not as good as Triple Play and MLB 2000), including numerous batting animations, real-time shad-ows when players move/stand, detailed jerseys with patches and correct team logos, and player numbers (including the correct number font). With good collision detection and display when fielders and runners collide, the AI makes Baseball 2000 a better game than the previous version, VR Baseball 99.
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The pitching interface is great. When a pitch is selected, a strike zone region is determined and slightly adjusted as the ball is pitched (same interface in Triple Play). In Interplay Baseball 2000, pitch speed can also be selected, which will determine the energy used by the pitcher. Pitchers must be warmed up before they enter the game. Another good feature is that auto base running and slides can be head first or feet first. There are many new features, like different replay camera angles and camera zooms, including “ball cam,” and all 30 stadiums are detailed in 3D; 700 new fully animated scenes were added including feet-first sliding, diving catches, jumping throws, kneeling throws, over-the-shoulder catches, outfield fence climb catches, numerous first baseman catches, and team rosters complete from the 1999 season with the ability to trade and create players.
Bad: The graphics issues include seams in the field, players whose facial hair is inconsistent, the same blank stare on faces, no home run celebra-tion, and slow frame rate. The stadiums are only half filled by fans. The baseball is represented by a white dot and not a rotating, seamed ball.
Sound issues include no umpire shouting and animating called balls and strikes (play-by-play announcer calls them), the play-by-play announcer gets redundant quickly, and the previous version had better crowd noises, better sound effects like hecklers and vendors, and the crowd’s roar was better. Also, the sound options are not saved.
Other issues include no user records, no career mode, incorrect 1999 schedule, all fielders run at the same rate, throwing to a player has one rate (should have player-defined throwing rates and rates for normal or aggressive throws), and loading the season (and saving it) is slow. Also there are no selectable camera angles (although replay has them all available).
Improvements: Pitching improvements include adding passed balls and wild pitches, and the pitcher is less accurate as he tires. Adding options for automating base running, pitching, hitting, throwing, and fielding. Mod-ifying the color commentary and having better play-by-play variations.
Animation improvements include adding umpire animations and involve-ment (motioning and speaking), having working and animated base coaches, filling the stadium with a variety of fans, having various home run celebrations, coming to bat rituals, and on-deck animations, having pitches without a long canned animation, and after a strikeout or a first base out, optionally throwing the ball around the infield. Improving the AI to com-pete with High Heat Baseball (intentional walks), having optional hitting and pitching cursors, and forcing base runners to go on a two outs and a full count.
Microsoft’s Baseball 2001
Microsoft’s Baseball 2001 has a major addition—the Baseball Mogul’s technology as the brains “under its hood.” Players can build and develop a team just like a Major League baseball general manager, simulate a schedule over days, weeks, months, and seasons and team and player statistics over seasons, and develop minor league players and teams. Game players can trade players with computer sophisticated AI that can accept a trade or reject one with a counter-offer.
Baseball 2001 is a full baseball simulation, including franchise factors like tracking players’ salaries, farm system and scouting budgets, and other bottom line decisions. The general manager mode has features like career mode, where the player can have control over the managers and coaches, manage finances, sign and release free agents, and make trades. Winning the World Series is important for revenue success (filling the stadium and paying for a winning team). The commissioner mode has the ability to cre-ate new players as well as manage the entire league (all teams). The financial aspects include base revenue, winning percentages, fan atten-dance and support, good team decisions, scouting costs, and farm system operation.
Baseball 2001 is licensed by Major League baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Association with all 30 teams and over 1,200 players and 35 stadiums, including Milwaukee, Houston, San Francisco, and Detroit.
The game includes commentary by Arizona Diamondbacks announcer Thom Brennaman and is endorsed by the Boston Red Sox All-Star short-stop and American League Rookie of the Year, Nomar Garciaparra.
Microsoft’s sports is a worthy challenge to Electronic Arts (sports champion “We are Sports”). The game features a floating indicator (cur-sor) that is used for pitching and batting, which differs from the twitch timing method utilized by Triple Play and EA/3DO’s High Heat.
The 1999 season’s actual statistics are used as well as tracking statis-tics, such as longest home run and pitcher’s statisstatis-tics, like number of pitches versus number of outs. Based on the batter’s statistics, he can attempt one of three swings: a power, contact, or normal swing. A normal swing provides a large indicator for a larger swing radius but with less hit-ting power. The power swing provides a smaller indicator defining a
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smaller swing radius but more power in his hit. Pitchers utilize the same indicator method as hitters, where the pitching statistics are correlated to the desired pitch type and speed.
Good: Great detailed player movements from extensive motion captured actor sessions, 3D realistic stadiums, high resolution, and multi-polygonal player models. Players animate and move more fluidly with high-resolu-tion digital imaging of player’s faces and individual player posturing and trademark movements. Comprehensive statistics tabulate individual player and team game and season statistics with analysis.
System requirements are the Pentium 166, 32 MB RAM, Win 95/98, DirectX 7, 3D accelerator card with 4 MB RAM.
Electronic Arts Triple Play Baseball EA’s Triple Play 2000 is an
“arcade-style” or “offensive”
baseball game, and fans and critics prefer a more realistic simulation experience in sports games. For the PC Windows market and the PlayStation, Triple Play was the best-selling baseball game.
Triple Play features stadium flyovers, was the first game with the now common two-man announcing team, and has on-the-fly commentary based on the player’s season. Smooth, well-animated graphics are apparent in Triple Play 2000 in the player’s movements, like swinging, pitching, or sliding, which all look sharp and detailed. The realistic polygonal models look natural, and the days of blocky and stiff 3D models are long gone. The stadiums are graphically impressive from Kansas City’s waterfalls and Boston Fenway’s “green monster” outfield to Baltimore Camden Yards’
right field brick building. Shadows based on the time of day as well as weather are just one of the realistic details present in Triple Play 2000.
The “Jumbotron” screen depicts batting and running players as a screen within a screen action. Other detailed graphic features include dust clouds when a player slides into a base or off the player’s cleats when the bat taps the footwear before entering the batter’s box. Even the clouds across the sky or the orange-red sunset shows the graphic detail achieve-ments. Players have facial animations and realistic expressions. The ball in motion has a slight comet-tail visual showing a fast moving ball. Broad-cast-quality camera angles and perspectives with zooming and panning are so seamless you begin to think that a cameraman is controlling the view-ing. Numerous home run animations depict visuals like a swing from four different angles, instant replay montages, and animations where the ball flies out of the stadium while another one shows the ball’s flight from its POV.
Triple Play 2000’s audio continues its predecessor’s features by having a real-time game announcer commenting play information in seamless speech, including the team and its players’ names (the speech sounds even, rather than strung or patched together).
In 1998 Triple Play introduced the two-man announcing team, where the duo not only describe the action but chat during idle moments and tell sto-ries of players and specific places. Even information about the current season being played is mentioned.
The crowd sounds and reaction to the game are improved, from the vendors selling beverages like lemonade or food to the crack of the bat, the
sta-dium announcer paging people, and music to get the fans yelling.
The menus in Triple Play 2000 have been streamlined for ease of use and faster gameplay. The batting interface allows for the traditional tim-ing-based bat-to-ball hitting system to a “zone cursor” that makes you target the strike zone. Batting allows for a normal swing, a power swing, a check swing, and a bunt.
The pitching interface (although still awkward) allows for a pitch type and a pitch area (strike zone or just outside the strike zone), and after the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand, an adjustment control can be used to more accurately move the ball along its intended path (called the “aftertouch”).
An arrow indicates the loca-tion of the ball (as a help feature).
Triple Play 2000 has a rookie level for extremely easy play, a pro level, and an
“All-Star level.” The player can customize each setting to a particular level.
Electronic Arts/3DO High Heat Baseball High Heat Baseball previously predicted that the New York Yankees would win the 1998 World Series (Correct—New York Yankees sweep the San Diego Padres) and the 1999 World Series (Correct—Yankees’ 4-1 victory over the Braves) and then announced that after
an 82-year drought the Boston Red Sox would win the 2000 World Series (Incorrect—New York Yankees beat New York Mets for third straight World Series).
The High Heat Baseball development team is headed by 3DO CEO Trip Hawkins, who leads a group of die-hard baseball fans. Hawkins was the visionary behind High Heat’s predecessor, Earl Weaver Baseball, the leg-endary award-winning sports title considered the best baseball simulation ever.
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High Heat was thoroughly researched for over four years through seeing games as a spectator in every ballpark and analyzing the other baseball games and evaluating new innovative concepts.
Good: High Heat has the most
accu-rate and realistic pitcher-against-batter statistics, true-to-life base running, fielding, managing, and
pitch-ing (wild pitches, pick-off base runners, manager visits to the mound, dropped third strikes, and passed balls). There are multiple camera POVs and an action-cam for close-ups in the action POV. All 30 MLB stadiums for 2001, including PNC Park and Miller Park (over 10,000 polygons per stadium), and historic ballparks like Baker Bowl and Shibe Park. Realistic texturing includes high resolution, high color, alpha blending and
mip-mapped technology, and real-time shadowing based on the current sun position or night game lights.
An intelligent crowd features more responsiveness in graphics, sound, and animated vendors. Players have realistic motions on their 6,000 polygon plus models with detailed uniforms (team logos, decals, striping, and pip-ing), actual face maps of over 120 players, true-to-life player motions, and over 1,300 animations and 300 signature animations of pitchers and bat-ters. There are TV-style graphics and menus. In-game animations include arguing with an umpire, base coaches that interact with the base runners, manager visits to the mound, managers able to signal to the bullpen for a new pitcher, and Jumbotron instant replay.
Other features include multiple team rosters for current and all previ-ous seasons with over 750 players, All-Star team selections from current year and previous year, tremendous statistics including historical statistics per player for each year, and batting practice mode with a training mode.
There is Internet/LAN play of exhibition, season, and playoff games. Also included is the ability to customize leagues where you define the teams, the schedule, and playoffs.
There are modes to perform multiplayer trades, free-agent pools, aging curves, a three-tiered minor league system, scouting profiles, full-featured draft setup, complete news, updates, and detailed career information tracking. Special modes include manage-only mode and one-pitch mode, batting practice mode, exhibition mode, season mode, career mode, home run derby mode, and playoffs mode.
Game commentary is by San Francisco Giants announcer Ted Robinson.
System Requirements:
Without a 3D Card With a 3D Card
Windows 95/98 Windows 95/98
DirectX 7 DirectX 7
Pentium 166 Pentium 200 MMX
32 MB RAM 32 MB RAM
4x CD-ROM 4x CD-ROM
110 MB disk drive 250 MB disk space
2 MB SVGA video card 4 MB Direct3D accelerator with a 800x600, 16 bit
DirectX7.0 sound card, 16-bit 3D sound card, 8-bit DirectSound
Multiplayer: Multiplayer:
28.8 or greater modem TCP/IP 28.8 or greater modem TCP/IP or IPX (network play) or IPX (network play)
Computer Gaming World’s Top Ten Games of All Time. Gamepen’s Best PC Sports Game of 2000.
Electronic Arts Triple Play 2002
Electronic Arts decided to hire a new developer (Pan-demic) to design and produce Triple Play 2002. The new version features numerous new motion capture animations, photo-realistic player head scans, and a TV-style look. The game has 500 animations with 40 signature animations and 160 star player face scans with each player consisting of 4,800 polygons. The commentators are Bob Costas and Harold Reynolds.
Triple Play offers the 2002 schedule and previous year
statistics tracking over 50 items. Fantasy draft, “End of Season” awards, and create a player (over 30 traits to modify) are also included.
3DO High Heat Baseball 2003
On the consoles, 3DO High Heat Baseball competes with EA’s Triple Play 2002. High Heat has new fielding animations and smooth batting animations. They’ve added the ability to draft and create a player. For the batter, there are now hot and cold batting zones. For the pitcher, fatigue is now calculated.
The game has 1,500 animations with 200 signature animations and 350 star player face scans with each player consisting of 6,000 polygons. The commentators
are Dave O’Brien and Chuck Valencia. High Heat offers the 2002 schedule and previous year statistics tracking 78 (splits to 150) items. Franchise mode, fantasy draft, “End of Season” awards, and create a player (33 traits to modify) are also included. The game features wild pitches and passed balls, dropped third strikes, injuries, on-field managers and coaches, and home plate collisions.
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Acclaim All-Star Baseball Four-time World Series Champion and 2000 All-Star Game MVP Yan-kee shortstop Derek Jeter endorsed and is fea-tured in this game. All 30 Major League teams and over 700 players with realistic face tex-tures. Players can select the
Cooperstown Hall of Fame team with roster including
Reggie Jackson, Mike Schmidt, and Nolan Ryan. Game commentary is by Arizona Diamondbacks announcers Bob Brenly and Thom Brennaman. All 30 MBL stadiums with active dugouts (with real, recognizable players sitting in them), bullpens, real outfield advertisements, real-time score-boards and Jumbotron (that show each player as he approaches the plate), and stadium features like the Kauffman Stadium (Kansas City, MO) water-falls, 2001 All-Star Safeco Field, Puerto Rico Stadium, PNC Park, Miller Park, and Oakland Coliseum.
The game has ani-mated team mascots, 130 varying player batting stances, 50 pitching animations, and over 1,500 player animations based on motion capture
ses-sions. There are classic uniforms from historic teams. There are seven camera angle views based on television broadcast positions. Season awards like the MVP, Cy Young, Rookie of the Year, and Golden Glove.
General manager mode for trading players, signing free agents, and drafting players, setting lineups, defining the pitching staffs, and viewing statistics for hitting and pitching in 44 categories. Each pitcher has six dif-ferent pitch types, including circle change-up, two-seam fastball, knuckle curveball, and spit ball.
Game modes include quick play, exhibition, season (162 games), World Series, All-Star Game, home run derby, and batting practice. Options include disabling interleague play, balanced play (play teams with same record), unbalanced play (play within your division) for half a season, full season, three-game round robin, and user-defined number of games.
Also customizable are options like game time (day, night, twilight), weather (rain, snow, clear), and game level (rookie, veteran, and All-Star). Players can create up to 25 players, defining their abilities and appearance. Fielding can be automatic
of the arcade-style baseball game as well as the simulation-style game.
This game has received the following awards:
IGN Editor’s Choice Award: All-Star Baseball 2001 and 2002, EGM Edi-tor’s Choice Award: All-Star Baseball 2000 and 2001, GamePro Baseball Game of the Year: All-Star Baseball 1999
Acclaim All-Star Baseball 2003 Since the previous versions are of high qual-ity, this game expanded its features and options. The fielding mechanics are improved, giving a much smoother look.
TV-style presentation in high detail, team mascots cheering
added broken bats, erratic throws, and wild pitches, as well as a com-pletely redesigned career mode, allowing up to 20 continuous seasons (3,000 games). All-Star has added an expansion mode to create a new team and over 50 Hall of Fame players to select.
The game has 1,900 animations with 200 signature animations and 400 star player face scans with each player consisting of 5,000 polygons. The three commentators (yes, there are three) are Thom Brennaman, Steve
The game has 1,900 animations with 200 signature animations and 400 star player face scans with each player consisting of 5,000 polygons. The three commentators (yes, there are three) are Thom Brennaman, Steve