5. Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball - SNES
Sports videogames were insanely popular when the Nintendo Entertainment System was first released during the early ‘80s; lots of entries along with lots of options and different gameplay. If that was done nowadays, it would definitely be considered bloatware; but without a doubt, one of the most iconic ones was Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball since it had very good graphics for a SNES game and also included real-life based teams and stadiums, which just made it more realistic for its time.
4. All-Star Baseball ‘99 - Nintendo 64 and Gameboy
Perhaps this is not the first title that we think of when we talk about baseball videogames in the ’90s, but it definitely deserves a spot on this list; All-Star Baseball ‘99 was a great advancement in terms of gameplay in comparison to its greatest predecessor Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball. Instead of having some weird unrealistic movements, the All-Star game offered the player a great sense of hitting and speed, which only made the experience feel more real. Can we also talk about how rare it was in 1998 for a game to be released in both the home console and portable counterparts; that was definitely the start of what Nintendo would constantly do in the next couple of decades.
3. Mario Super Sluggers - Wii
Super Mario has been Nintendo’s biggest IP for decades and is one of the big faces in the worldwide universe of entertainment; of course, there had to be some sport-themed videogames within its appearance in nearly 200 titles. And while baseball is not as frequent as golf or tennis, there is one entry that gave a couple of million fans lots of hours of fun. Playing with the iconic Super Mario characters with motion controls and some twisted rules, Mario Super Sluggers is one of the most beloved games by Super Mario sports games fans.
2. Wii Sports - Wii
Wii Sports is not a baseball game by itself; the game, which was shipped with most of the Wiis sold at the time, also included minigames surrounding tennis, bowling, golf, and boxing. It wasn’t just a huge success in terms of sales and the getting of casual players into a home console after the struggle of the company with the Nintendo Gamecube; it also fully introduced the videogame industry into motion controls which would later be replicated by Sony and Microsoft with the Playstation’s Playstation Move peripheral and Kinect for the Xbox, which would later help better develop Virtual Reality for the next decade. Of course, the baseball part of Wii Sports could’ve been quite more polished, but we can’t deny the joy it brought to lots of people and the impact it would have on the technology industry as a whole.
1. MVP Baseball 2005 - Nintendo Gamecube
Yeah, I know that MVP Baseball 2005, developed by Electronic Arts wasn’t either made by or is a console exclusive for Nintendo, but neither was The Witcher 3 and that doesn’t stop it from being one of the best open-world RPGs out there. MVP Baseball 2005 is constantly referred to as the best sports videogame ever; and ever since its release, it included a total of 1,000+ players to choose from all 30 official Major League Baseball teams along with lots of phenomenal stadiums and even all 30 unique dynasties from their time. It’s also very important to say that the Gamecube entry was the version with the best critical score among all the other major consoles, including the Xbox, PSP, and Play Station 2.
