MLB The Show 24 female Road to the Show player Davis playing shortstop for New York Mets

Female options for Create-a-Player coming to The Show 24

 March 8, 2024  Posted in Friday Starter 254 Views

The Show of Their Own

MLB The Show 24 is adding female character creation and a unique story (or at least a scripted friend character?) for their Road to the Show mode.

I expressed doubt that a women’s league would be added after the recent Toni Stone announcement, but clearly my head was in the wrong place. No, they won’t add a women’s league (well, I guess this still could get announced) but women in Road to the Show is possible after all.

Kelsie Whitmore, a woman who has played in the Pacific Association and Atlantic League, is namechecked in the feature trailer and was interviewed on The Show‘s page announcing the new feature.

On that announcement page, I’m curious for details on Mia Lewis, a fictional character who is your create-a-player’s childhood friend and fellow player. Road to the Show has remained basically devoid of writing to this point, unlike similar modes in NBA 2K. I appreciate their effort with the MLB Network cinematic stuff (which unfortunately hits me like Nyquil). And Road to the Show always has 1-3 paper-thin dialogue scenes, just enough to get a screenshot and say “Look, it’s like a baseball RPG!” But I think it’s fair to say the mode has been devoid of writing.

But now there’s a fictional character and a unique women-only storyline. I’m not expecting a Spike Lee joint, but maybe this could be interesting.

Is this the first baseball video game to include women?

I can only think of a few small precedents for female players in U.S.-released baseball games. Bad News Baseball proudly announces a “Girls Mode” on its box art (which requires a cheat code to activate!). Then there are a few softball games with at least a few female players: Sammy Sosa Softball Slam… City League Softball… Dusty Diamond’s All-Star Softball has a witch character and the final boss team is all Amazons. Is it surprising that A League of Their Own didn’t lead to some women in baseball games?

I’m struggling to come up with an official example of a woman in a baseball management game like Baseball Mogul or Out of the Park Baseball. Especially back in the days when OOTP used to include even semi-professional leagues, a little surprising that women weren’t really included. It has been asked for before.

Now we’ve crossed out action games and simulation/management games, so we’re down to interactive fiction. Butterfly Soup and Butterfly Soup 2 are prominent games in the Itch.io visual novel world which happen to be about high school girls’ baseball teams. And it’s too small to set a precedent for anything, but I wrote an interactive fiction game in an alternate universe with both male and female professional baseball players sharing a league, called The Fielder’s Choice.

Japan has a little more history with this. Like I mentioned after the Toni Stone announcement, Pro Yakyuu Famista 2020 has an actual licensed professional women’s league in it, with all the players. A small chunk of the fictional players in the Pawapuro series are female. I Love Softball and the Doki Doki Pretty League series only have female players.

Notably none of these have a realistic style (most Japanese baseball video games don’t and never have). The Prospi series has never included female players, to my knowledge.

So it may be a lot of caveats, but I think it’s fair to say this is the first realistic-styled baseball video game to allow playing as a female athlete.

EDIT: Props to Remember That Guy? for remembering that game and messaging me: The Super Mega Baseball series has female players in a fictional pro league. Can’t believe I forgot that one.

Auction Site Listing of the Week

This is a listing to sell the game case for High Heat Major League Baseball 2003. Except someone crossed out the game title and wrote God of War instead. Now that’s what I call environmental storytelling.

New Encyclopedia Pages

The encyclopedia part of this site continues to slowly beef up. I’ve started adding instruction manual scans where I can find them, mostly from Gaming Alexandria. And there are some brand new pages too:

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