Friday Starter is a weekly column of news and tidbits from the world of baseball video games—past and present, domestic and foreign.
More details on The Show‘s Amateur Hour(s)
As previously announced, high school and college are newly added to Road to the Show, the player career mode of Sony’s baseball video game franchise. This week, San Diego Studio put out the above summary video and this longer deep dive going into detail on the new features in this mode. Picking out my personal highlights:
- It’s now confirmed, the eight colleges shown previously are the only schools in this year’s The Show: LSU, TCU, UCLA, Texas, Vanderbilt, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Cal State Fullerton.
- There are four high schools, which have their own new logos, uniforms, and parks (which were created using the game’s own create-a-park feature). I actually really like the high school logos they made, and the uniforms are pretty good. The parks, eh…
- The college games are played at an Omaha-ish college championship stadium, also created with the create-a-park feature.
- New sounds for metal bats and chain link fences to fit the new settings.
- Tokens! You get tokens for major achievements and completing difficult in-game challenges. You can use these tokens to directly upgrade attributes however you like. I have asked for exactly this level of control, to make this a true RPG mode, and I’m really excited it’s here.
- Choose your own perk effects with a progression tree.
- Equipment now is a percentage effect on all of your perks in a certain category, instead of increasing base attributes.
- I didn’t know this, but the devs say it in the deep dive video: It has never been possible to get drafted #1 overall in Road to the Show before, but it’s possible in 25. I’m kind of shocked? But good change to make this possible. I wonder how well you have to play in the amateur games to make it happen.
- You are recruited by different colleges depending on your performance, and each college offers different potential perks to improve your player. More prestigious colleges make you more likely to get drafted earlier in MLB, which also results in more benefits for your player.
- You can of course also choose to go straight from high school to the pros. You are not able to get drafted #1 overall by following this path (not exactly realistic but I understand, it’s a video game) so there are some trade-offs.
I think these are a ton of great changes, honestly. Worse than anything, Road to the Show needed to let you choose how to upgrade your player, instead of forcing you to choose overall archetypes, or depend on equipment drops to make your player better.
It’ll be interesting to see if promotions along the pro career path work differently now that you can choose how to upgrade your player. Previously they seemed to be extremely simple in a frustrating way: Get to 60 overall and go to AAA. Get to 70 overall and go to the majors. No matter how well you played or who was in front of you on the depth chart. If they make that system a little smarter, my gripes with the mode are just about all gone.
A high school game in one of the new parks. 
A bedroom scene from between games at the high school level. 
A scout from the University of South Carolina asks if you want to join Cocky’s crew. 
A college game with LSU in the Omaha-ish College Chamiponship park. 
A screen showing each college, their attributes, and their relationship with your player. 
The tokens upgrade menu, allowing you to upgrade power overall or even individual attributes at a more granular level. 
The perks, equipment, and tokens on offer after joining LSU. 
The decision tree to customize how a perk affects your player.
A KBO mod for Major League Baseball 2K12
I was excited to see this mythical object appear on YouTube this week: a KBO 2024 total conversion mod for the PC version of Major League Baseball 2K12. Current Korean league players, uniforms, logos, and even some partial attempts at modeling the stadiums.
So how do you play it? If you translate the comments on the video, you’ll see that, for whatever reason, we mere mortals aren’t allowed to try it out. It’s handed around in a hushed tone behind the scenes only to a select few.
The KBO baseball game modding community works in the shadows, for some reason. There’s a similar brouhaha around a KBO patch for the new Pro Yakyuu Spirits game, with fussing and fighting over a user who released the patch freely, but it was later taken down. I don’t understand restricting access to a fan patch like this personally, but I admit I’m a total outsider in this scene.
Backyard Baseball meets auteur cinema
I got a great comment this week on my video of Backyard Baseball 2003 for the GBA:
As a fan of baseball video games and fine cinema, I had to check it out. And, sure enough:
I’m sure they both pulled something out of the same sound effects library. But, still, the overlap is delicious.
YouTube Viewing Guide
- RIP Tsubakurou, the chubby, goofy Yakult Swallows mascot. The same person who has worked in the suit since the character’s debut in 1994 has passed away, and the mascot is taking some time off for the foreseeable. In tribute, take a look at this collection of his goofy bits from the 2024 season.
- High Heat Major League Baseball 2002 (PS2) Gameplay – I had a ton of fun recording this one, and got a real back-and-forth battle with great twists and turns. Sometimes you just want a baseball game where the X button swings and you can hit some bombs.
- Baseball Live 2005 (PS2) Gameplay – This one’s worth watching for the unique camera angle: through the catcher’s mask. Not sure if it’s how I’d want to play every game, but it was fun to spend a little bit of time on.