Collection essentials #223: MLBPA Baseball (SNES)

Here is another game here purely for nostalgia. MLBPA was THE baseball video game I grew up with. Originally my cousins Kevin and Peter had it and I would play it at their house, but then it wound up in my possession. I don’t remember if they just gave it to me, or if I traded them something for it, or what. All I know is that the copy in the photo is the one from our childhood all those years back.

MLBPA Baseball is named as such because it got the license from the players union to use all their real names, but they did not get the license from MLB to use actual team names and logos, so the teams are named by what city they play in and merely have color schemes like the real teams do, with no logos. So it’s the opposite of Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball, which had all the real teams and logos but no actual player names except Griffey. 

This is certainly an adequate baseball game, but nothing really special at all, definitely inferior to the aforementioned Ken Griffey title. If you’ve played any other old baseball game, you pretty much know what to expect from the gameplay. Pitching and hitting is easy and smooth enough. Fielding, however, is a little more dicey. When the ball is hit in play, the camera is zoomed in quite far, so players have to rely on a radar map to start moving their fielder in anticipation of where the ball is going to be, but being precise in this way can be difficult. It’s also annoyingly easy to throw to first base before a player comes over to cover by accident, allowing a runner to not only avoid an out but often take an extra base. It’s also easier than it should be for the right fielder to get a runner at first base with a force out, something that’s extremely rare in actual baseball, and I remember my dad getting really mad at that once years back. There are probably other oddities and difficulties with fielding in this game that I could point out, but I haven’t played this game much in recent years.

When I found the game in my possession, it became a go-to for me and my dad to play together, and I remember us playing quite often. My dad taught me sportsmanship in these little play sessions, because little me was often quite the sore loser! 

This game is also the source of an odd meme between my cousin Kevin and I. I can’t remember if this was one time or multiple times, but once when we were kids for some reason he insisted on us having a “Seattle vs. Seattle” match. And somehow we never forgot that and occasionally reference it to each other. If we ever fire this game up for nostalgia, we are very likely to pick that mirror match as we play each other.

I wouldn’t recommend anyone play MLBPA now as there are far better baseball games out there, but such a significant game from my childhood simply has to be an essential, especially when I still own my childhood cartridge.