Baseball Games of 2023: The Year in Review

I’m increasingly optimistic that “baseball,” as a sport, is entering a renaissance. The sport is undoubtedly growing in places like Australia and Finland. I personally know two British baseball obsessives. The World Baseball Classic ended with an anime-style showdown between the two best players in the world. And the pace of play rule changes in MLB seem to have been a big success.

Baseball video games though? Feels like we’re still stuck in a bit of a down cycle. The economics of the game industry are strangling the quickly-made, mid-budget titles that used to include baseball games. It’s been a decade since the final MLB 2K game. Bandai Namco keeps putting ads all over ballparks but their latest baseball game came out in 2020. Only Konami and Sony publish AAA baseball games anymore. And there’s reason to worry if Konami’s Pro Yakyuu Spirits might turn into a free-to-play series forever since the mobile game has been so profitable.

2023 did have a few notable mid-range baseball games: Super Mega Baseball 4 and WBSC eBaseball Power Pros. Super Mega Baseball 4 got EA Sports back in the baseball business, and added real players to the series’ previously all-fictional roster. WBSC eBaseball finally brought Pawapuro out in English again (just barely), with a $1 price tag making for some well-populated and fun online play for a while.

First I’ll mention some 2023 games I didn’t get to yet, then I’ll hand out a few 2023 superlatives for baseball gaming.

Games I Missed

• Barnstormers: Determined to Win – A VR-only interactive movie about the Negro Leagues. I don’t have a VR headset yet to check it out with.
• Bat Hero – A side-on home run derby kind of game using fantasy action game assets. Doesn’t look especially interesting but it looks barely within the scope of this site.
• Big Ball Sports – A new PC and Switch game from SAT-BOX, the makers of Desktop Baseball. It’s a multi-sport compilation including baseball, with the gimmick being the ball is always bigger than the players.
• Digital Diamond Baseball V11 – I keep meaning to try one of these over the past few years and haven’t yet. It’s a baseball simulation with a focus on managing, and with some nice features for integrating tabletop simulation game results into the software.
• Home Run Batter: Vs. Fairy Tales – A meme-y VR-focused home run derby game inspired by the infamously difficult Winnie the Pooh Flash game. I’ve seen a few streamers play this, but no VR headset, so I haven’t tried it myself.
• World League Baseball – Recording this soon in the new year. A Korean-made PC/Mac baseball game with a nice-looking cartoon art style.

Newcomer of the Year

Bad Hop Baseball smashed Peggle into baseball in a pretty satisfying way. It’s a breath of fresh air in a world where every other indie baseball game that shows up on Steam has the same simple home run derby gameplay. If this were a Flash game in 2004 or so, I would have spent 40 hours playing this.

(World League Baseball looks like a strong candidate for this award, but I haven’t played it yet! My apologies to Haegin Co.)

Best Old Baseball Game of the Year

MLB Slugfest 20-04 was a great rediscovery for me this year. Midway’s culture was a perfect match for Steroid-era baseball (and still would be a good match for the “Play Loud” era now!) and I love stuff like the season win cinematic starring Sal Divita.

The gameplay is genuinely different from other PS2 baseball games, with a clearer focus on the pitch location guessing game by splitting the zone into a grid of nine boxes. Isn’t this better than the extreme fine motor reflex test of moving your analog stick to a precise pitch location? At least if you want arcade-style gameplay.

Cheat codes are also a huge part of Slugfest, with the NFL Blitz and NBA Jam style of quickly inputting a code during the load screen. We have to get back to cheat codes, as a society. Sometimes it’s fun to play a game with moon gravity, or big head mode, or where every player is Scorpion from Mortal Kombat. But where would you put those things on a menu in The Show? Gravity could be on a slider I guess. But sliders aren’t as fun as cheat codes.

Baseball Game of the Year

Well… I mean… It’s MLB The Show 23. I criticize this series a lot, but I can’t give you a different answer to the question “What was the best baseball game of 2023.” Super Mega Baseball 4 would take the prize for best local multiplayer gameplay, though it was a mild disappointment on single-player content and the new real-life players weren’t as exciting as they could have been. The only new Konami game this year was the $1 WBSC eBaseball Power Pros (and Eikan Nine Crossroad for mobile), which has its place but I can’t say is better than The Show.

This year, The Show added the Negro League Storylines mode. This was an exciting addition, and the new parks in particular look great. The documentary video content was decent, and they did more with Moments gameplay than the actual Moments mode has. I would really love a full historical team or two from the Negro Leagues to be added and available for exhibition play, and a season/franchise mode (probably semi-fictional so you could combine different eras of players together) would be really excellent. But I suspect we’ll just get more Moments for next year, and that’s okay.

Swing feedback keeps improving every year, and I thought batting was the clearest and best it’s been in the whole series this year. I still think an old-school game designer could help them find a way to do swing feedback instantly instead of in an after-the-fact on-screen graphic. You don’t have to wonder how your swing missed in something like Pro Yakyuu Spirits. It’s just obvious right away where your swing missed, with giant “(slightly/very) early” or “(slightly/very) late” text to make the timing part as clear as possible.

Diamond Dynasty remains the best junk food experience in sports gaming. Unlike EA’s Ultimate Team modes, The Show does not pry your wallet open with a jackhammer. As long as you’re not insistent on chasing down specific top-tier cards, the option to spend is there but I don’t feel pushed into it (after already paying $70 for the game itself that is).

Graphically, screenshots won’t look much different for 23 versus 19 or even all that different from 14, but the PS5 and Xbox Series X versions now have to run 4K/60 instead of the 720/30 we used to get back on PS3 (when, besides resolution and framerate, the graphics were freaking stunning already). With PS4 and Switch versions presumably coming for MLB The Show 24 I don’t expect a major change here soon, but it’s tempting to wonder when the next graphical overhaul will come.

Looking Ahead

We’re due for the next Pawapuro game, sometime between March and July this year. Probably we’ll know a name and a release date about a month from now. Fingers crossed maybe this one will have a native PS5 version?

Yerr Out is an indie animal-based baseball game that’s leaving early access sometime early next year.

There have continued to be rumors about a new Namco baseball game, possibly a sequel to Mario Super Sluggers. Or we’re overdue for a new Famista after the previous games came out in 2014, 2015, 2017, 2018, and 2020.

We can count on new versions of MLB The Show, Out of the Park Baseball, and Baseball Mogul, with no details announced yet for any of ’em.

Happy New Year folks, and here’s to 366 days of baseball games past and present.