How different were 989 Sports and San Diego Studio?
Sony published two different baseball games with “2006” in the title: MLB 2006 under the 989 Sports brand, then MLB 06: The Show with development credited to Sony Computer Entertainment America. Everywhere, San Diego Studio is named as the developer of this initial The Show game, though I don’t see that name actually mentioned anywhere in the manual or credits.
Different sites differ on whether MLB 06: The Show is the start of a new series or not. Wikipedia says it’s a new series, though it lists the 989 Sports games as predecessors. Giant Bomb says they’re all one series. Mobygames treats The Show as a separate series. Well I’m working on my own encyclopedia pages for the games now, so I’ve got to come to a decision myself.
Exhibit A: The loading screens in The Show definitely think it’s a sequel.
Above is one example from the PSP version of MLB 06: The Show. “All-new three-man commentary booth?” Doesn’t make sense if you think it’s an all-new series.
Exhibit B: Pretty much the exact same people worked on it.
Mobygames doesn’t have the credits yet unfortunately (maybe I’ll add them), nor have I found a credits video inside the game itself yet. But the manual for MLB 2006 has the full staff credits. So I compared some of the top names against the MLB 06: The Show manual.
I made this Google Sheet. The highlighted names worked on both games. It’s almost 90% of the core team.
Exhibit C: It has a new subtitle and it’s kind of awkward to convincingly refer to both sets of games with one name.
I guess you could say “the Sony MLB series,” but adding a subtitle was an improvement for a reason. It also allowed the series to reset its years. Naming a baseball game MLB 2006 and releasing it in early 2005 is shameful, and this was a way out of that problem without skipping a year.
Exhibit D: The Show doesn’t have a hugely different feature set than MLB 2006.
Both are PS2 games. Both have an early version of the career mode that would later be called Road to the Show. The big new mode in The Show is actually King of the Diamond, which is like a high-score mode that didn’t stick around for long. There’s no sharp difference between the games that would justify this being a brand-new series.
So, the most important verdict you’ll hear anywhere this week…
I have decided the MLB games by 989 Sports are part of the same series as MLB The Show. Thank you for listening.
Baseball Music
Sheena Ringo and Atarashii Gakko! teamed up for this very baseball-themed music video. I will share any music video that has the word “eephus” in it.
New Encyclopedia Pages
Like I said above, I’ve been working on finishing up basic pages for each game in the The Show series. Next up, I’m adding the 989 Sports games.
YouTube Viewing Guide
- Street Sports Baseball (Commodore 64) Gameplay – Oh, so that’s where Backyard Baseball came from. I guess Dusty Diamond’s All-Star Softball is a little close too. Sure, Humongous Entertainment did everything better than this game, but you can see some charm here.
- Playstadium (PS1) Gameplay – The weird Disney/Kingdom Hearts character proportions are interesting. Man, there used to be so many dang baseball games for the first two PlayStations. A golden age.
- MLB 2000 (PS1) CPU vs. CPU Gameplay – Admittedly it might be just due to Vin Scully, but these 989 Sports games feel so west coast to me that I always have at least one California team involved. Despite being developed in British Columbia, MVP Baseball is much more of an east coast series to me, between the heavy Red Sox influence and the college baseball games.