The McGwire/Sosa home run record chase in MLB The Show
I’m a sucker for more historical content in MLB The Show, so I’m excited about the Great Race of ’98 program in Diamond Dynasty, launching later today. No real details have been released aobut the program yet, besides that it will cover the 1998 season, starring McGwire, Sosa, and other standouts from that year.
McGwire and Sosa were already two of the biggest reward cards for collecting the full rosters of each MLB team in either league, so they’ve been in the game already. But McGwire was presented as an Athletics player, which made me wonder if they would shy away from the steroid era.
Fingers crossed that San Diego Studio will find a way to bring their Negro League Storylines method of generating fake player names to fill out historical rosters for Moments. Rather than the typical situation where Sammy Sosa would end up playing alongside Seiya Suzuki and Christopher Morel, which breaks the immersion pretty severely.
Entering my PC-98 era
Speaking of 98, I stumbled into an eBay listing for four Japanese PC-98 baseball games from a U.S. seller, and snapped it up ASAP. The PC-98 series of computers by NEC reigned supreme in Japan throughout the ’80s and ’90s. For me at least, the most famous thing about these computers is their games often featured some stunning pixel art.
The platform has plenty of baseball games to pick through also. The four I bought are all baseball management/simulation games:
- The BestPlay Baseball, part of the Best Play Pro Yakyuu series
- Yakyuudou Plus, another pro baseball simulator
- Super Yakyuudou 2, another pro baseball simulator in the same series
- Eikan wa Kimi ni, a high school baseball management game
These were premium products. Each would cost more than $100 adjusting for exchange rate and inflation. And the packaging reflects that! Each box is huge, nice quality, with a big instruction manual. I love big box PC games and these are if anything nicer quality.
I’ve recorded video of The BestPlay Baseball and Super Yakyuudou 2 for the channel already, and expect to have pages for each game on the site here soon.
Want a Pawapuro-kun 3D model?
Of course you do. You can find him here alongside lots of other beautifully copied 3D models from recent Pawapuro games. Great free content for your 3D printer, fangame, or fan art.
YouTube Viewing Guide
- Jewish I.Q. Baseball (Commodore 64) Gameplay. This is a Judaism trivia game where getting questions right helps your team win the ball game. Okay!
- Pro Yakyuu Team de Asobou (Dreamcast) Home Run Chomp Gameplay. I had to show off this especially cursed mode in Sega’s arcade-style Dreamcast baseball game. It’s like a home run derby, but for bonus points you hit homers into the mouths of giant baseball players?
- Homer Hindsight (Browser) Gameplay. This game is starting to make the rounds like MLB Pickle did a few months ago. The game gives you a clip of either a fly ball or home run from a real 2023 MLB game, showing you only through just after the swing, before the broadcast cuts away to the field angle to show where the ball went. You have to guess if it was a homer or not. Great idea for a game, though the number of wallscrapers that just barely stay in or go out are insane!