Five for Friday: Where Does MLB The Show Rank Among The Best Baseball Video Games of All-Time?

In honor of MLB The Show release day, Press Break takes a look at five favorite baseball video game titles.

Present-day pop culture and entertainment bring out the cranky old man in me. Hollywood produces too many interconnected superhero movies; I want to watch a film, not do homework! What happened to rock music as a genre, and why are so many of today’s rappers guys with face tattoos mumbling about Xanax?

I do not spare video games from my curmudgeonly cynicism either. I will argue passionately that both the Madden and NBA 2K franchises were vastly superior in the 2000s compared to today. But I was also more in the target demographic back then, so it stands to reason that I’m simply not the intended audience. Put simply, my taste doesn’t matter.

That said, I still love MLB The Show despite not-uncommon complaints that Sony, like EA with NFL or 2K with the NBA, has grown stale through having exclusivity to the brand. Maybe that’s true, but The Show has at least maintained a high standard of excellence, remained user-friendly in its controls, and not abandoned the individual player to cater to the online community.

The Show 25 drops today, March 14, and you can bet I’ll be downloading a copy to my son’s Nintendo Switch. With its release continues a long tradition of me playing baseball video games.

Across multiple generations of consoles and dramatic shifts in style, Five for Friday introduces the five best baseball video games of all time. As always, these are subjective rankings with loose, if any, criteria — though in this case, I am limiting inclusion to a single entry for running series.

Also, a necessary programming note: I did not include the beloved Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball for the simple fact that I’ve never played it. Yes, yes, I know. However, I did not own a Super Nintendo, and none of my childhood friends with an SNES owned the game.

Baseball Stars 2

Childhood nostalgia often makes us all remember certain things as being much better than they actually are. I can’t tell you how many ‘90s movies I revisited years later only to be sorely disappointed.

In the case of SNK’s Baseball Stars 2, however, the game holds up more than 30 years after its initial release. At the ‘90s children’s utopias that were arcades, SNK Neo-Geo machines were hidden gems. Whereas the Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat cabinets often attracted lines and cost — gasp — two quarters to play, Neo-Geo stand-ups usually offered a choice of fighting games like King of Fighters and Samurai Showdown. Even better, Neo-Geo games only cost a quarter.

I could not have been older than 10 when I came across a Neo-Geo programmed with Baseball Stars 2. I was immediately hooked. SNK’s trademark artistic style, more resembling a manga than an attempt at simulation, gave Baseball Stars 2 a unique look.

Cutscenes to highlight big plays added an element of excitement. Most importantly for a young player like I was then, the controls were easy to pick up. Fast forward to fatherhood, and a pizza parlor in my neighborhood has a Neo-Geo cabinet. Playing Baseball Stars 2 for the first time in ages, I was quickly reminded why I loved the game as a child. Playing it alongside my own son — not unlike rewatching childhood film favorite The Sandlot as a dad — only made the experience even better as an adult.

World Series Baseball ‘95

For youngsters like myself who owned a Sega Genesis in the ‘90s — Give me Blast Processing or give me death! — I imagine World Series Baseball was to Sega what Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball was to Super Nintendo players.

World Series Baseball ‘95 was the first baseball simulation I ever owned, and it immediately set a standard that no baseball video game exceeded for two generations of consoles (more on that momentarily).

Sega Sports put out quality titles in this era but didn’t often live up to EA Sports. College Football’s National Championship, for example, was a ton of fun; Bill Walsh College Football, however, was exceptional.

In the case of World Series Baseball vs. Triple Play, however, Sega ruled. World Series Baseball offered stunning graphics for its time. The fact that position players had animated movements during at-bats was pretty mind-blowing in 1995. The controls were smooth, and the ballpark PA announcing each at-bat felt revolutionary.

High Heat Major League Baseball 2003

A criminally underrated, if not entirely forgotten title — I blame having Curt Schilling as the cover athlete — High Heat Major League Baseball was the first standout title of the sports gaming golden age that was the PS2 generation. I played EA’s Triple Play and the 989 Sports MLB series in the generation between my introduction to gaming on the Sega Genesis and the launch of PS2 in the early 2000s, and both had good qualities. Neither blew me away like World Series Baseball, nor had the same replay value I got from the Sega title.

High Heat became the first baseball series that grabbed me like that. In some ways, High Heat influenced me more than any other baseball video game. I attribute much of my love for and ongoing fascination with the Montreal Expos to playing that game; my first summer home from college, I played through a season as the Expos and became a fan of Vladimir Guerrero and Orlando Cabrera as a result.

Likewise, this title debuting during my freshman year plays a part in my appreciation for it. My circle of friends spent hours squaring off on High Heat over beers. We played it together more than any other PS2 game.

I never played the 2002 version that, coincidentally, had Vlad Guerrero on the cover. Checking out reviews from the time, critics didn’t love High Heat 2002, which came to the PS2 in a crowded marketplace with EA’s Triple Play and Acclaim’s All-Star Baseball.

Reviews for the 2003 edition are not markedly better, which might explain why High Heat did not last beyond a 2004 (2003 MLB season) version. For me, however, it’s a title associated with endless great memories, and the first entry into the peak age for baseball video games.

MLB The Show 06

A new generation of gaming was on the horizon in spring 2006 when Sony released MLB The Show 06. Xbox got a year’s head start with the 2005 release of the 360 console, while both Nintendo and Sony had the Wii and PlayStation 3 lined up for the 2006 holiday season.

The new system from this era that I played the most wasn’t PS3, Wii, or 360, though. It was the PlayStation Portable, released in 2005.

Over lunch on my birthday that year, my then-girlfriend and now wife surprised me with a PSP as my gift. When I showed the system to a friend on The Daily Wildcat staff a few hours later, he marveled, “You have a great girlfriend.”

Anyway, there were three PSP titles that provided me with hours upon hours of entertainment: Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories, and The Show. I’m including multiple installments of the MLB series, but The Show 06 was the first and the one that most captivated me.

Sports games for the PSP were rarely as good as on consoles due to the portable system’s inherent limitations. However, the PSP version of The Show looked, sounded, and played every bit as well as its PS2 counterpart from my experience.

Every stadium looked great, Matt Vasgersian’s call was easily the best video-game play-by-play I’d heard to that point, and the gameplay was challenging and realistic without being frustrating — a refreshing difference compared to MLB 2K, a series in which I felt like every game ended with a 1-0 slog. As detailed in the intro, I remain a loyal The Show player to this day. However, you never forget your first.

MVP Baseball 2005

For anyone who played baseball video games in the last 25 years, was there any doubt what would be No. 1? EA Sports is a frequent punching bag in recent times for the studio’s seeming complacency with the Madden franchise.

Even dating back to the 2000s, 2K’s NBA and College Hoops completely outclassed EA competitors NBA Live and March Madness.

College football fans went gaga a year ago with the announced return of EA’s NCAA Football, rebranded without the NCAA title. I chalk some of that up to the aforementioned rose-colored glasses of nostalgia, however; the same complacency that seems to plague Madden made NCAA Football a tiresome disappointment for several years running before its decade-long hiatus.

If any EA Sports title deserves the wistful memorials that were so persistently dedicated to NCAA Football, it’s MVP Baseball.

And indeed, those who do remember EA’s final foray into professional baseball celebrate it as arguably the greatest MLB video game ever made. With graphics on the PS2 that were better than 2K could deliver on the later generations of consoles, MVP Baseball looked more realistic than any other sports title of its time.

And while plenty of present-day video games prove that breathtaking graphics mean nothing if gameplay fails to deliver, MVP Baseball 2005 hit a home run. Sorry for the corny turn of phrase, but I can’t help geeking out as I take myself back to the summer of ‘05 and guiding the Chicago Cubs to a World Series.