"Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got 'til it's gone..."
Those song lyrics very succinctly sum up my feelings about this gem of a baseball video game. Ever since the mid-1990s, football fans have had the Madden franchise to turn to for great sports gaming, and (with only a few exceptions) it has never let them down. For baseball fans, however, it has been a "whole new ballgame".
The problem is this: It is incredibly difficult to make a truly great baseball simulation. Usually the culprit is a difficulty level that is much too high (e.g. too hard to hit against good pitchers), or a presentation containing shoddy graphics and/or clunky movements. In all honesty, my baseball sim of choice until I discovered this franchise for the Gamecube was Tony LaRussa Baseball II (1994) for the PC. Remember DOS? If you are under 23 years of old or so I doubt it, but that was the PC platform that Tony II ran on. Sure, the All-Star Baseball series had a decent installment in 2001, but none of the graphic-based sims of the video game consoles could match the stats- based editions (like Tony 2) of yesteryear. That is, until the MVP series.
I started playing the MVP Baseball video game series in 2003 with the PC installment, but the '05 version is superior to all others. It had everything a baseball fan could ask for: great graphics (beyond what the Nintendo Wii produces, for example), incredibly fun minigames (like Home Run Derby and Pitching Squares), a perfectly balanced difficulty level (easy to pick up, tough to master), and the ability to tinker with new players (my brother and I updated the teams by creating new players through 2007 from the '04 rosters!). Nostalgia for Tony II aside, this was the premiere baseball simulation game of all-time, and it looked to only be getting better.
Of course, as so often happens, the whole issue of "MLB players rights" ruined the greatest baseball game ever and instead jumped to the "2K9" franchise, which has now succeeded in completely sucking the life out of baseball sims with its terrible game quality. Unfortunately, the MVP line was reduced to doing two college baseball-based games, which predictably failed, and now the series is defunct for all time.
Although I have currently "moved on" to the XBOX 360 gaming system, I still look back on games like these with fond memories of playing epic games with family and friends. Eventually, another franchise will come along to restore baseball's dignity in the gaming world, but until then fans of the National Pastime can still tinker with these "oldies but goodies". The rosters may be filled with players that you can hardly remember, or are on so many different teams now that it makes your head spin, but the quality of the gaming experience is just so much better.
Those song lyrics very succinctly sum up my feelings about this gem of a baseball video game. Ever since the mid-1990s, football fans have had the Madden franchise to turn to for great sports gaming, and (with only a few exceptions) it has never let them down. For baseball fans, however, it has been a "whole new ballgame".
The problem is this: It is incredibly difficult to make a truly great baseball simulation. Usually the culprit is a difficulty level that is much too high (e.g. too hard to hit against good pitchers), or a presentation containing shoddy graphics and/or clunky movements. In all honesty, my baseball sim of choice until I discovered this franchise for the Gamecube was Tony LaRussa Baseball II (1994) for the PC. Remember DOS? If you are under 23 years of old or so I doubt it, but that was the PC platform that Tony II ran on. Sure, the All-Star Baseball series had a decent installment in 2001, but none of the graphic-based sims of the video game consoles could match the stats- based editions (like Tony 2) of yesteryear. That is, until the MVP series.
I started playing the MVP Baseball video game series in 2003 with the PC installment, but the '05 version is superior to all others. It had everything a baseball fan could ask for: great graphics (beyond what the Nintendo Wii produces, for example), incredibly fun minigames (like Home Run Derby and Pitching Squares), a perfectly balanced difficulty level (easy to pick up, tough to master), and the ability to tinker with new players (my brother and I updated the teams by creating new players through 2007 from the '04 rosters!). Nostalgia for Tony II aside, this was the premiere baseball simulation game of all-time, and it looked to only be getting better.
Of course, as so often happens, the whole issue of "MLB players rights" ruined the greatest baseball game ever and instead jumped to the "2K9" franchise, which has now succeeded in completely sucking the life out of baseball sims with its terrible game quality. Unfortunately, the MVP line was reduced to doing two college baseball-based games, which predictably failed, and now the series is defunct for all time.
Although I have currently "moved on" to the XBOX 360 gaming system, I still look back on games like these with fond memories of playing epic games with family and friends. Eventually, another franchise will come along to restore baseball's dignity in the gaming world, but until then fans of the National Pastime can still tinker with these "oldies but goodies". The rosters may be filled with players that you can hardly remember, or are on so many different teams now that it makes your head spin, but the quality of the gaming experience is just so much better.
