The best thing about it is that they can use a life-size image on the cover.

One comment in, and we have a winner.

Is that cover jinxed?

Is that cover jinxed?

I just had that same thought.

Err, wanna coke?

The best thing about it is that they can use a life-size image on the cover.

One comment in, and we have a winner.

Agreed.

The best thing about it is that they can use a life-size image on the cover.

Looks like I was a little late getting to the thread. The best and only line is gone.

Is that cover jinxed?

I doubt it. I had MVP baseball 2004, with manny on the cover. He went on to hit .292/.388/.594 153 OPS+ 45 HR and 144 RBI in 2005. Of course in 06 he had a 165 OPS+, so maybe there is something to the baseball VG curse.

#1 is the best thing ever.

Mostly I'm excited about the LOTR/MLB cross-over potential now.

The best thing about it is that they can use a life-size image on the cover.

Damnit, the front page had this thread at only four comments when I clicked it so I figured I'd have a chance at getting that line in before somebody else did.

Changing the subject a bit, I think they should use a life-size image on the cover. HIIIII-YO!

Mostly I'm excited about the LOTR/MLB cross-over potential now.

I think LOTRO is doing an expansion this year. Maybe it can be like that Schilling boss in Everquest or something.

The best thing about it is that they can use a life-size image on the cover.

That's ridiculous, why would they make the box over 5½ feet tall? It wouldn't fit on the shelf, and the discs are so small it would be just a terrible waste of space.

Russlan is no longer overhyped. Time for a new handle.

That's ridiculous, why would they make the box over 5½ feet tall? It wouldn't fit on the shelf, and the discs are so small it would be just a terrible waste of space.

Ah, but you forget: there is a Dustin Pedroia in every box!

I am ashamed that I am more than a little pleased by your approval.

You like me! You really like me!

Dammit. When is Callaspo going to get this much respect?

I had MVP baseball 2004, with manny on the cover.

So, in like 2013, Pedroia will be a tumor in the Red Sox clubhouse?

I had MVP baseball 2004, with manny on the cover.

Actually it was Pujols on MVP 2004. I still play that game. Manny was on MVP 2005.

So, in like 2013, Pedroia will be a tumor in the Red Sox clubhouse?

If he did indeed have the game right and the player wrong, then that actually means Pedroia will undersevingly lose an MVP vote to Ryan Howard and stop winning Gold Gloves.

He deserves it.

The Show is the best baseball video game series. Sucks that a Red Sox player is on the cover, but it's fine.

I had MVP baseball 2004, with manny on the cover.

Actually it was Pujols on MVP 2004. I still play that game. Manny was on MVP 2005.

I was referring to 2005, but I have both, there in lies the confusion.

The Show is the best baseball video game series.

How does it compare to the old High Heat Baseball series? The early versions of that are still my favorite baseball video game (non-sim division).

The Show is the best baseball video game series.

Agreed. I love the hitting interface in that game, so awesome. You can walk!

How does it compare to the old High Heat Baseball series?

I don't know, I only played High Heat a couple of times. I was playing Triple Play at that time for some reason.

I don't know, I only played High Heat a couple of times.

Hey, you've already answered my question with this:

Agreed. I love the hitting interface in that game, so awesome. You can walk!

After all, a big part of the reason that I loved High Heat was because of the hitting interface (and the extremely tunable settings). Sounds like I'm going to have to grab a copy of The Show shortly.

The Show is the best baseball video game series. Sucks that a Red Sox player is on the cover, but it's fine.

I was a huge fan of EA's 03-05 MVP baseball. The "GM Tools" weren't the greatest, but the on field hitting/running/fielding was great. The pitching was way way to easy though. I haven't put the hours in the 2k or the Show series like I did EA. I liked the MVP baseball so much, I picked up the 06 and 07 NCAA baseball game. Those games were better than MLB games for a few reasons; 50-60 game seasons instead of 162 (much easier to finish), wide spectrum of talented players and teams (you could be challenged, or 10 run rule somebody), and EA did a good job of capturing the over inflated college offense.

I played 2k last year, and thought it was ok. The main thing I liked was the pitching interface, seemed fair and challenging. Most of the time on any Video baseball, at least for me, pitching is way too easy.

What's the over-under on how long it'll take before Pedroia starts getting the patented BTF Jeter treatment?

What's the over-under on how long it'll take before Pedroia starts getting the patented BTF Jeter treatment?

They aren't similar. As you can tell from this thread, Pedroia's sort of a joke. The whole issue with Jeter was how deathly seriously he was taken by the media.

Generally the issues I face in baseball video games are that it's too easy for me to pitch really well and on offense, I can't walk. In The Show, you can definitely work a walk without having to adjust anything about the game and while the pitching is generally on the easier side, primarily because I never walk anyone, you will give up the occasional long ball and you adjust the sliders you can make it very realistic overall. We should start an online league or something, guys. Oh, and my baseball video game history is that I started with the Ken Griffey series on N64 as I wasn't a fan of the 800 foot homers in Mike Piazza's Strike Zone, then made the switch to All Star Baseball until about '04 jumped to MVP for a year or two while also dabbling with 2K, and found my home with The Show.

The whole issue with Jeter was how deathly seriously he was taken by the media.

Give it time. If Pedroia has another couple seasons at all close to last year, and the Red Sox pick up another couple world series wins, we'll start to see Dustin "CLUTCH GOD" Pedroia and Dustin "COUNT TEH RINGZZZ" articles about him as well.

What's the over-under on how long it'll take before Pedroia starts getting the patented BTF Jeter treatment?

I was under the impression that Pedroia could go 2 steps to his left and catch a 5-hopper.

NJ in DC: Thanks. That sounds like about as good a summary as I could ask for.

Give it time. If Pedroia has another couple seasons at all close to last year, and the Red Sox pick up another couple seasons, we'll start to see Dustin "CLUTCH GOD" Pedroia and Dustin "COUNT TEH RINGZZZ" articles about him as well.

I really, really doubt it. The dude's 5-foot-4 and looks like a (balding) child dressing up in his dad's uniform. Derek Jeter looks like the platonic form of baseball player. Dustin's an obnoxious little red-ass, Jeter carries himself as the epitome of class.

I'd guess Pedroia, if he maintains this level of production, will get a treatment on BTF that can be measured by the following formula, where t(player) = BTF treatment of player.

t(Paul O'Neill) + t(David Eckstein)
-------------------------------- * Pedroia OPS+
2

Generally the issues I face in baseball video games are that it's too easy for me to pitch really well and on offense, I can't walk. In The Show, you can definitely work a walk without having to adjust anything about the game and while the pitching is generally on the easier side, primarily because I never walk anyone, you will give up the occasional long ball and you adjust the sliders you can make it very realistic overall.

Yeah pitching, on any game, has always been way too easy. The great thing about the NCAA games was the fact it was relatively easy to take a walk. There was 100+ teams on the game, so the talent level of pitchers varied a lot more than on MLB games. You could easily face a pitcher on the NCAA game that had no control and draw 6-8 walks a game. On the flip side, you could have a pitcher that's equally as bad on your team.

I wouldn't say the game engine or anything was the best, just that EA did a great job of capturing the large variance in talent across 100+ teams. It was a more realistic simulation of real life NCAA baseball than most MLB games that simulate MLB baseball.

My favourite baseball video game was Earl Weaver Baseball.
I played it at university. It was more of a managing game for our group, and we drafted players from the past to fill our teams. I remember draft day very well as I picked 7th and grabbed DiMaggio with my first pick(this is 1991, so my baseball knowledge was very weak). What made it even sadder is that I accidentally selected DOM DiMaggio from the list.

High Heat 2001 is still the best baseball video game ever made, it's a shame 3DO went under. Power was a little out of whack, but it was based on the ridiculous year 2000 (5/5.3 RPG NL/AL). If you didn't pitch to the corners you would get hammered, and you risked walking anyone you got behind on. Balls hooked and sliced properly off the bat, so you could get those hook over the bag doubles.

In The Show, you can definitely work a walk without having to adjust anything about the game and while the pitching is generally on the easier side, primarily because I never walk anyone, you will give up the occasional long ball and you adjust the sliders you can make it very realistic overall

It's harder in The Show to pitch well with guys who have lousy command as opposed to MVP where you could turn any one into a CY candidate. And I love that if you miss, you start to lose effectiveness on your pitches. I shelved the game when college football started, but I'll probably break it out, maybe buy the new one in the near future.

What's the over-under on how long it'll take before Pedroia starts getting the patented BTF Jeter treatment?

They aren't similar. As you can tell from this thread, Pedroia's sort of a joke. The whole issue with Jeter was how deathly seriously he was taken by the media.

As Ryan says, Matt: Give it time. Don't think that the media doesn't suck up to scrappy little infielders just as much as they suck up to Teen Idols with four ringz. The question is how long it'll take the reaction to the Pedroia suck-up to set in here, especially considering how topheavy this place is with Red Sox fans. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

Of course they suck up to scrappy little infielders. They suck up to scrappy little infielders in a way that is wholly dissimilar to the way they suck up to Jeter. That's my point. As I said, Pedroia will get some combination of the Eckstein treatment and the O'Neill treatment, but dialed up in intensity.

During the 1994/95 strike, I played Ken Griffey for SNES nonstop. Great game.

In retrospect, the graphics were lousy and the gameplay was incredibly unrealistic. But compared to RBI and Bases Loaded for NES it was the bomb.

Nowadays I play mostly OOTP. The last console I bought was a PS2, which I'm not sure even runs anymore. After High Heat went away, it seemed like the EA games and the like stressed graphics over realistic gameplay. Unlike the Madden and even some basketball games, it didn't seem like there was a game that offered both. Has that changed?

After High Heat went away, it seemed like the EA games and the like stressed graphics over realistic gameplay.

The Show's strength is it's gameplay. The charging the mound and arguing the call flashy stuff from MVP was dropped (The Show is not an EA Sports game, but MVP was what I played before). The defense is a little off at times, but usually it's pretty good and probably better than anything else I've played. It's best game for attempting to rob HRs that I've ever played (although the computer does it a little too often). The hitting is awesome and the pitching is also better than any of the recent games I've played.

As I said, Pedroia will get some combination of the Eckstein treatment and the O'Neill treatment, but dialed up in intensity.

Wasn't there some article about a month ago where some writer declared that Pedroia had had one of, if not the greatest start to a career for a 2nd baseman ever? That's the Jeter treatment, not the Eckstein treatment.

Of course they suck up to scrappy little infielders. They suck up to scrappy little infielders in a way that is wholly dissimilar to the way they suck up to Jeter. That's my point. As I said, Pedroia will get some combination of the Eckstein treatment and the O'Neill treatment, but dialed up in intensity.

I agree, and I'm not sure what you're arguing about. By "the Jeter treatment" I didn't mean that it would assume an identical form, only that at some point any thread that mentions Pedroia will provoke a reflexive anti-Pedroia reaction (probably along the lines that you suggest), just as now any Jeter thread is buried with sarcasm and general trashing. The only question I had was: When will that point arrive?

Did you read this thread? It's buried in sarcasm.

EDIT: to be clear, I have no problem with that. I enjoy the Pedroia jokes. I just think that if Yankee fans are waiting to see visited on Red Sox fans that same experience that Jeter's fans had, they're going to be disappointed. The experience will be very different.

Bases Loaded for NES

Paste!!!

Did you read this thread? It's buried in sarcasm.

He's only been playing for two years. I doubt anyone hated Jeter before 2000 or so.

I doubt anyone hated Jeter before 2000 or so.

No, RSBB was pretty anti-Jeter by around 1998 or so, once it became clear that he had no business playing shortstop. Plus him finishing ahead of Alex Rodriguez in 1998 for MVP was the subject of much ridicule. Then in late 1999 it seemed like there was a Neyer column a week on how Jeter was finally living up to the hype of being as good offensively as Rodriguez and Garciaparra.

We definitely hated/resented Jeter well before 1998.

I doubt anyone hated Jeter before 2000 or so.

He's a Yankee. I've hated him since the day he came up from the minors.

Now, if you're talking about specific hate, rather than generic hate, then you're probably right.

EDIT: Or perhaps not.

No, RSBB was pretty anti-Jeter by around 1998 or so, once it became clear that he had no business playing shortstop.

This is now generally understood to have been false, and Jeter was only mildly below average at SS.

Oh, and my baseball video game history is that I started with the Ken Griffey series on N64 as I wasn't a fan of the 800 foot homers in Mike Piazza's Strike Zone, then made the switch to All Star Baseball until about '04 jumped to MVP for a year or two while also dabbling with 2K, and found my home with The Show.

That makes me feel a little old. No RBI Baseball? Baseball Stars?

Did you read this thread? It's buried in sarcasm.

Of course I did, and that's exactly what prompted my original question as to how long it'd take for the tone of this thread to spread to all the other Pedroia threads.

I'm not taking a position on the validity of it one way or another, I just recall that it was pretty widespread. For example, the most advanced defensive statistics available at the time were the BBPro ones, which may have exaggerated his defensive deficiencies (as they did a few others, like Chipper Jones). Point being, RSBB and sabermetrically-inclined bloggers (although we didn't call them that at the time) were making noise about Jeter needing to be moved pretty early in his career and seized upon the opportunity to find fault in the Yankees' golden boy.

In other words, RSBB was doing this circle jerk well before 2000.

RSBB was pretty anti-Jeter by around 1998 or so, once it became clear that he had no business playing shortstop.

Hehe. What fielding stats was the hate in 98 based on? Couldn't have been ZR or UZR.

EDIT: You already answered it, thanks!

That makes me feel a little old. No RBI Baseball? Baseball Stars?

Well, I'm 22, didn't know what baseball was until '96 and didn't start watching on a regular basis until '98, which was around the same time I started getting into baseball video games.

Wait a second...you guys are excited to be able to take a walk in a video game? That sounds dull to me.

The thing that bugged me about RBI Baseball is that it only had about half the teams, along with an AL and NL All Star team for the stars of the best players from the teams not included.

Also, you didn't have full pitching staffs, just the two best starters and two best relievers. For example, the Mets had Dwight Gooden, Bobby Ojeda, Jesse Orosco, and Roger McDowell. I thought that was really stupid.

Here's the rosters for the Nintendo version:

http://www.rbibaseball.com/welcome.html

Wait a second...you guys are excited to be able to take a walk in a video game? That sounds dull to me.

It's exciting as it's a combination of a couple things - the game actually properly considering pitcher control (so that all pitchers don't throw non-stop strikes), and the game providing a suitable set of visual cues so that you can actually pick up the type and motion of the pitch, and recognize whether or not it's a strike. For years, almost all games didn't really bother with either of those, so the winning strategy was just to swing at anything, which made the hitting experience extremely unlike actual baseball.

Wait a second...you guys are excited to be able to take a walk in a video game? That sounds dull to me.

It's not a whole lot of fun to play in franchise mode and have your entire team hit their OBP. It really subtracts from the experience. Working the count is probably the most enjoyable part of video game hitting, it's nice to have to work on more than timing and gives you a much more realistic sense of what it's like to hit.

Oh, btw, I love the guess pitch feature. What a wonderful idea.

Well what was really annoying is that the other teams in the league that were autoplay would generate realistic walk and strikeouts, so it was really frustrating when you would look at the league leaders.

One of the games (High Heat, I think) had a feature were it would simulate a count for each hitter. So if you were Barry Bonds, you'd hit more often with a 3-1 count, whereas when your pitcher came up you might find yourself down 0-2 or whatever. That helped generate more realistic outcomes. But generally, depending on the difficulty setting, I'd wind up with decent BB totals, but unrealistically low K totals, or realistic K totals, but unrealistically low BB totals (for both pitchers and hitters). High Heat was the best, but it still didn't generate realistic totals like DMB or OOTP, which is ultimately what drove me to the text sims.


EDIT: The autocount feature was akin to adding an automated count down to the game clock in Madden. I hated played 5 minute quarters, but until 2001 or 2002 that was the only way to get realistic stats (otherwise you were running 150+ plays a game because you were essentially always in hurry-up). It really improved the realism when they added the countdown feature to all but the end-of-the-half plays. You'd get a realistic number of snaps with 15 minute quarters--and you could complete a game in a little under an hour.

I doubt anyone hated Jeter before 2000 or so.

I irrationally hated Jeter since 1996 when he hit the HR that never happend (Maier), and because he's a yankee.

I have rationally hated Jeter since 98-99. Playing Strat-O-Matic and actually seeing his, Nomar's, A-Rod's, and later on Tejada's cards and then wondering why mainstream media and a large portion of baseball fans thought he was "God's gift to shortstops".

One of the games (High Heat, I think) had a feature were it would simulate a count for each hitter.

You're right, it was High Heat - there was an option in the game manager mode which would automatically estimate the count.

It's exciting as it's a combination of a couple things - the game actually properly considering pitcher control (so that all pitchers don't throw non-stop strikes), and the game providing a suitable set of visual cues so that you can actually pick up the type and motion of the pitch, and recognize whether or not it's a strike. For years, almost all games didn't really bother with either of those, so the winning strategy was just to swing at anything, which made the hitting experience extremely unlike actual baseball.

Well, for me it was just because I hated having my guys BA= or >OBP.

Wait a second...you guys are excited to be able to take a walk in a video game? That sounds dull to me.

Basically, if you can't take a walk, it means it's way, way too easy to throw strikes, and generally way too easy to command pitches, regardless of the pitcher. Being able to work a walk, besides being fun on its own, is the key sign of the game having struck the right balance between its pitching and hitting, and having found a way to correctly reflect differences in pitcher quality.

One of the games (High Heat, I think) had a feature were it would simulate a count for each hitter. So if you were Barry Bonds, you'd hit more often with a 3-1 count, whereas when your pitcher came up you might find yourself down 0-2 or whatever. That helped generate more realistic outcomes. But generally, depending on the difficulty setting, I'd wind up with decent BB totals, but unrealistically low K totals, or realistic K totals, but unrealistically low BB totals (for both pitchers and hitters). High Heat was the best, but it still didn't generate realistic totals like DMB or OOTP, which is ultimately what drove me to the text sims.

I think they had this feature in All Star Baseball '05 or '04. It was awesome and I really enjoyed it.

Wait a second...you guys are excited to be able to take a walk in a video game? That sounds dull to me.

It's not "taking the walk" that's exciting, it's having a more true to life baseball simulation. When I played HS and college ball I always worked the count, and so that style translated over when I try to play a video game, it's just hard to do. As much as I like the realism, there is something to putting up a line on MVP '05 with Mike Lowell of .285/.350/.610 SLG (bad memory), but I had 51 HR and 130+ RBI. And the Red Sox were trying to move him for Tex, just ignorance.

Well, for me it was just because I hated having my guys BA= or >OBP.

+1

What really annoyed the crap out of me was having Kurt Manwaring and Royce Clayton hitting over .330 (1993 Giants, on Ken Griffey SNES).

I could tolerate Bonds or Clark hitting above .400, but it was possible to post >> .300 for too many mediocre hitters. Griffey SNES didn't even track BBs, IIRC (just BA, HR, RBI, SB for hitters; ERA, W-L, K, and SV for pitchers).