- I took a trip to McKay’s Used Books (and games) and Lost Ark in Greensboro, North Carolina and came back with a bunch of new games. The new entries in the collection, in completely random order: HardBall 99, Super Power League 2, Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu 2, MLB Superstars, Backyard Baseball 10, Baseball Pro-Nami Kusayakyuu (PS1), MLB 2002, MLB 2004, World Stadium ’91 (PC Engine), All-Star Baseball 2005, and Super League (Mega Drive).
Lost Ark’s a very cool store, but it feels like the prices are getting worse there over time, and more and more of the interesting stuff to browse through is getting stashed away in the locked glass cabinets. But hey, where else could I get a chance to play Pop’n Music?
- MLB The Show has been a great series and an invaluable contributor to the world of baseball video games, even if it may not feel like that now that it’s the only simulation-style game still in business. But if I had to name my absolute favorite contribution to the culture of baseball video games that San Diego Studio has given us, it’s this: Naming the games after the current year instead of the next year after the game’s release.
Madden comes out with the new NFL season in August. Sure, the game came out in 2022, but it’s for the 2022-2023 season, so I don’t mind the game having the title Madden 23. NHL and FIFA are the same (If the game were called MLS 23 then we’d have an issue, but with the exception of Major League Soccer, virtually every soccer league around the globe straddles two calendar years).
Baseball starts and ends in the same calendar year, and baseball video games tend to come out in spring, or July at the latest (there are exceptions of course, though hardly any in the annually-recurring series that need to have a year in the game’s title). So it’s always been ridiculous to copy the Madden and FIFA template by naming your game after not the current year but next year.
In the Sony-published, 989 Studios-developed MLB series that predated The Show, games were named after the next year. MLB ’98 came out in June ’97. MLB 99 came out in April 1998. MLB 2006 came out in March 2005. Then The Show was able to bravely restore order by releasing a game called, correctly MLB 06: The Show in February 2006.
Here is the official Hall of Name Game Shame:
- Triple Play series by EA Sports. Example: Triple Play 99 was released in February 1998.
- MLB series by Sony. Example: MLB 99 was released in April 1998.
- All-Star Baseball series by Acclaim. Example: All-Star Baseball 2005 was released in April 2004.
- Baseball Mogul series by Sports Mogul. Example: Baseball Mogul 2004 was released in March 2003.
And a partial list of brave heroes who named their games properly:
- MVP Baseball series by EA Sports
- MLB The Show series by Sony
- Bottom of the 9th series by Konami
- Every game that was released only in Japan. I haven’t been able to find any Japan-only games named after the next year, and there are even some funny counter-examples: Sega’s Pro Yakyuu Team wo Tsukurou 2003 was released as late as November 2003. Konami’s Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu ’96 was actually released in February 1997 for PC.
And the prize for complete inconsistency goes to Sega’s World Series Baseball series. ’96 came out in 1996, then ’98 came out in 1997, then 2K1 came out in 2000, then 2K3 came out in 2003. Total chaos.