Arcade? Sim? Metroidvania?
The language we use to describe sports games needs an update. For decades, I’ve seen the terms “arcade” and “simulation” used to describe these games.
Super Mega Baseball 4 is “the new standard for arcade sports games.” MLB The Show is “a full-featured simulation baseball game.” These terms sound like they describe a mechanical difference between the games. But do they? Both are games where you aim a bat cursor in a strike zone to hit. Both are games with timing meters to determine the quality and aim of your pitch, or defensive throws. Both games have different in-game athletes with different levels of ability, impacting their results as you play. Super Mega Baseball has no fictional superpowers.
If SMB4 and The Show swapped gameplay schemes but kept the same presentation, SMB would still be called an arcade game and The Show would still be called a sim.
So in practice, “arcade” and “simulation” are only describing the presentation style of sports games. Simulation games go for graphical verisimilitude: a realistic art style. Arcade games can look like cartoons, or manga, or 16-bit pixel men.
I don’t think either term is descriptive, given this. What do cartoon graphics have to do with arcades? You can easily have an arcade game with a realistic art style. The word “simulation” and a figurative art style both imply realism, but simulation should mean either the mechanics or the results of a sports game are realistic, not the art. And “simulation” implies a human player shouldn’t be controlling the action. In Franchise Mode, it may ask you, “would you like to play this next game, or simulate it?”
I’d like to propose some new genre terms for baseball games:
- Action baseball games – Baseball video games where you control players directly. R.B.I. Baseball and MLB The Show are both primarily action baseball games.
- Baseball tactics games – Baseball video games where the primary gameplay is making tactical decisions for the team, without direct control of players. These games usually cast you, the player at home, as the manager: Tony La Russa Baseball, for example. Simulation Pro Yakyuu is also a baseball tactics game. The Show has a little-known manager mode that would qualify as a tactics game, but it’s not the primary mode of play.
- GM games – Baseball video games where the primary mode of play is “general manager”-type decisions. Trades, free agents, or training players. Out of the Park Baseball and Baseball Mogul both let you be the manager, but I think anyone would agree the focus of those games is GM decisions more than manager-level tactics. You could call these “baseball strategy games” to fit the military definition of strategy vs. tactics, but I think that would be confusing. “Baseball strategy” still sounds like it refers to in-game decisions like pinch hitters, bunting, etc.
In other words:

Like any system of genres, there will be confusing overlap sometimes: Hardball! is very close to being a tactics game, but you still have to time your swings as a hitter.
There are other genre distinctions we could find a language for. There is a difference in dimensionality between R.B.I. Baseball and MLB The Show, not just in graphics but in mechanics. In R.B.I., your swing can only be aimed in one dimension (left or right). In The Show, your swing can be aimed in two dimensions: up/down, left/right. In a VR game like Absolute Baseball, this becomes three dimensions: left/right, up/down, and forward/back.
And we could have a term for baseball games with clearly fictional abilities. Backyard Baseball and Baseball Simulator 1.000 (despite the name) have power-ups that takes us out of the realm of realism. I can’t find a good term for these yet that sounds definitive enough to be a genre.
Backyard Baseball update
A few weeks ago I looked into the Backyard Baseball revival rumors and came to the conclusion that new animation was definitely coming, but I wasn’t sure about a game anytime soon. We got an announcement video last week that the franchise was returning, without any details on when or how:
Some new, pretty slick animation with lots of details referencing the original Backyard Baseball computer game. This came with a new official website reproducing the main menu from the original game, and a merch store.
The announcement got a lot of play in sports and entertainment media, like Sports Illustrated, Variety, People, The Athletic, and CBS Sports. The games press has been a little more cautious, it feels like, with a less triumphant tone on these stories from Game Developer, GameSpot, and IGN.
The SI story says the video game series will return “in the coming months,” but as I said last time, Playground Productions doesn’t seem to employ anyone with game development experience. And I can’t find public job listings for roles on their team. It’s possible that a different game studio has been contracted to develop these games, but that seems like something the press releases and announcements should mention.
So it is nice to see these characters back, and the animation looks good. But I remain curious what exactly these new games are going to be.
Yeah Jeets
Video game documentary channel Noclip uploaded this footage of a motion capture session for Major League Baseball 2K6 this week. Cover man Derek Jeter puts on the suit with the ping pong balls on it and walks through his batting stance and some defensive plays.
I get the sense this mo-cap session would be good for the hitting side of things but bad for defense. For one thing, their capture area is too small, and a few times Jeter skitters up the curved floor into the wall as he runs out of room. If I were a Yankees rep watching this I might have shut things down for potential injury risk.
For another, Jeter looks like he’s going 40% of game speed. Small, slow movements, maybe more like some light pre-game fungo than real defense. I’m curious how much of it ended up being used in-game, and if the game look suffers as a result. I think that’s a common issue with this era of mo-capped sports games: The animations tend to look underdone, both because hand-animated games exaggerate movement to make it pop on-screen, and because it’s hard to get mo-cap actors to move with all the urgency a real athlete would mid-game.
YouTube Viewing Guide
- Major League Baseball 2K10 (DS) Gameplay – I cannot believe this came out on the same console as 2K8 Fantasy All-Stars. It looks better and plays like a regular old pretty okay baseball game, on the Nintendo DS. What a miracle.
- Pro Yakyuu Spirits 2014 (PS3) Gameplay – It’s fun to see Shohei Ohtani pitching like he still does today (well, like he did last year and will hopefully do next year) in a PS3 game from ten years ago.
- Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu 2014 (PS3) Gameplay – Until recording this, I completely forgot Yuli Gurriel played a year in Japan before MLB.
- MLB The Show 16 (PS3) Gameplay – Usually the PS3 The Show games charm me all over again when I go back to them. But this time, I couldn’t hit and the 720p resolution gnawed at me in a way it doesn’t typically. Maybe I just shouldn’t play as the White Sox.