What is your History with MLB The Show?

[TheWarmWind]

Quote: Originally Posted by mattyp2002

I am a big Hockey fan and I only buy NHL every 2-3 years, because there is not enough of a jump in content to live up to a $60 purchase.

Plus there was that horrible taste nhl 15 left. Sorry to go off topic, I'm just very, VERY bitter about that. I didn't even finish a season in that game. That's why I feel like snapping at everyone on the Show forums who talks about updated player models, because that's what NHL 15 did WHILE TAKING AWAY SO MANY FEATURES and not addressing any of the fundamental issues plaguing the series. Seriously guys MAYBE I'll get on board after the Show 16 comes out, we'll see.

I agree that the Show is the only sports series worthy of a yearly purchase right now. 14 and 15 were both amazing, and 16 is looking like it's going to be the best of the three. I have NEVER regretted purchasing the Show.

[SFNiners816]

Quote: Originally Posted by mattyp2002

I remember Sports Talk Baseball! My older brother played that game to death while I was waiting on my turn to play Sonic The Hedgehog and Streets of Rage. xD That was the game that would track the ball from an overhead blimp cam view right? The ball would look like a beach ball before falling back down towards the field. haha I agree with you about year-to-year game saves. It is a total game changer! Before they were introduced when my time with the previous years entry would be winding down, I would start to sim and rush through my franchises and Road to the Show players progression just to get an idea of where my team/player ultimately ended up before the new entry was released. Now I don't feel the need to rush through anything anymore. I'll just keep my game saves preserved and safe on my hard drive and in the cloud and once the next game is released those old saves become new again. Its awesome.

I always joke with my buddies that the biggest competition for the Show in regard to me personally, would be if somehow they implemented a franchise and multi season play with stat tracking in to sports talk baseball. I still have binders of stats I used to keep with that game when I was in like 7th-8th grade. My all time favorite player Ryne Sandberg was an absolute stud on the original sports talk baseball.

This same logic holds true for NHL '94 and Super Tecmo Bowl on the original 8bit NES.

[SmooveMove]

My first real experience with a baseball video game was MLB 2K11 on the X-Box 360. I thought it was a great game and I had a ton of fun with it, but I soon learned of the existence of MLB The Show and after seeing a few videos I had to have it.

I went ahead and bought myself MLB 12 The Show, and that game will always be legendary to me as my first MLB The Show. Just hearing the soundtrack gives me that strong feeling of nostalgia. Unfortunately looking back I didn't really make the most of the game as I was mostly addicted to doing fantasy drafts and I never made it far in a franchise.

MLB 13 is when I started getting more comfortable with actually playing the game. I learned about OSFM and actually made it somewhere in a Mets franchise. Still, this is not a game that I remember all that well.

MLB 14 came around, and I was back to fantasy drafting, BUT this time I drafted a team and stuck to it. I made it two season in playing a decent amount of games and won a world series. I remember my team being built around Giancarlo Stanton, Bryce Harper, and Tanaka who was a created player. Definitely had a ton of fun playing this one.

I enjoyed 14 so much that in MLB 15 I did another fantasy draft. My team was bizarre looking back on it. Joey Votto, David Wright, Lorenzo Cain, Bartolo Colon as my opening day starter. I don't what I was doing, but it was still a good time. I made it maybe 2 seasons in (it's hard to remember, I haven't played in a while).

Thats basically where I'm at with The Show series. I'm a franchise guy, and I'm sticking to doing fantasy drafts. I never got that into RTTS or online play, but franchise mode fills that need for a baseball video game. I assemble a team and go on an adventure around the country playing baseball as them. Thats how I look at it at least. I'm planning another fantasy draft for 16, and I think I'll get the farthest this year than any other in my franchise. I can't wait!

[mpulse24]

Quote: Originally Posted by TheWarmWind

Plus there was that horrible taste nhl 15 left. Sorry to go off topic, I'm just very, VERY bitter about that. I didn't even finish a season in that game. That's why I feel like snapping at everyone on the Show forums who talks about updated player models, because that's what NHL 15 did WHILE TAKING AWAY SO MANY FEATURES and not addressing any of the fundamental issues plaguing the series. Seriously guys MAYBE I'll get on board after the Show 16 comes out, we'll see. I agree that the Show is the only sports series worthy of a yearly purchase right now. 14 and 15 were both amazing, and 16 is looking like it's going to be the best of the three. I have NEVER regretted purchasing the Show.

I think NHL 15 left a bad taste in everyone's mouth, At the time it was released, I hadn't bought an NHL game since '12 and was itching for a new one and when the reviews first hit for '15, it was like a punch to the stomach. I was so put off by EA that I refused to buy '16 at launch and wait things out. I didn't pick it up until the EA sports sale on PSN after the holidays, I ended up getting NHL 16 for like $20.

Quote: Originally Posted by SFNiners816

I always joke with my buddies that the biggest competition for the Show in regard to me personally, would be if somehow they implemented a franchise and multi season play with stat tracking in to sports talk baseball. I still have binders of stats I used to keep with that game when I was in like 7th-8th grade. My all time favorite player Ryne Sandberg was an absolute stud on the original sports talk baseball. This same logic holds true for NHL '94 and Super Tecmo Bowl on the original 8bit NES.

haha damn, so you were pretty hardcore with your stat tracking huh?! Sports games have come a really long way when you stop and look back at what we had back in the day! haha I am still pumped over finding out that The Show '16 will have full career statistics for all players this year!

[Madden's Jowels]

I used to love baseball when I was a young kid, 9-13, in that range. I was a Griffey fan (of course) and watched all the Mariners games I could. I live in the northwest so we got Fox Sports Northwest as part of our satellite package, so I'd try to watch almost every night. I played Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball on the Super Nintendo, and the Slugfest sequel. I also played a TON of Triple Play on my PC, 98, 99, 2000, maybe 2001, can't remember for sure.

Sometime in the early 2000's, I really just lost interest in baseball. The 3 main causes were probably a)Griffey and then everybody else leaving the Mariners, really sad... b)I'm sure some of it had to do with the rampant steroid scandals, and c) I started getting increasingly into the NFL more and more each year as I got older, and as the NBA was always my #1 as a kid, it left baseball as kind of the odd sport out. I almost completely stopped watching or caring about it for quite a while.

Flash forward around a decade, MLB The Show really helped me get back into baseball. I started really getting into the single player modes like My Player in NBA2K or Superstar Mode in Madden, or Road to Glory on NCAA Football. My friend, who is a huge baseball fan, told me that The Show has the best of all those modes, called Road to the Show. I believe it was MLB The Show 13 (could have possibly been 12) where I first tried it. I went over to his house and we created a guy, ended up on the Montgomery Biscuits lol, and we sat and played the minor league games for several hours and I was hooked. I went out and bought a used PS3 and a used copy of the game a few weeks later and that was a wrap for me. Been addicted ever since.

It really gave me a reborn appreciation for baseball as well, and over the last 3-4 years I've definitely started watching the real thing a lot more often, following the stats, reading baseball writers. I'm certainly nowhere near a diehard guy but I'm at least a casual-intermediate fan again.

[Picci]

I remember sitting at the airport in LA in 1995. I was awaiting a flight to Hawaii so that I would marry my wife, so I purchased and started reading a gaming magazine that had a baseball article about a new baseball game in development from 989 Studios. Few years later it would arrive. Been married to both my wife and SCEA since......

[Nero84]

I'm from the UK and was waiting for a cricket game to come out that this Australian dev team was making (there's never been a good cricket game) The head of the studio would do Q&A's on their forum and said they were heavily influenced by MLB The Show so I bought The Show '13 to tide me over until the game came out. Not only did I very quickly become a fan of the game, baseball is now by far my favourite sport (I'd barely watched any before playing The Show) and has given me thousands of hours of entertainment (and horrible, horrible pain, I'm an A's fan) all because of MLB The Show.

I never did buy that cricket game.

[MetsFanInPA]

Quote: Originally Posted by Gagnon39

I was an MVP fanatic and majorly depressed after the series was ended after MVP 2005. I refused to buy a baseball game in 2006 because 2K's game was garbage. I only had an Xbox at the time and in 2007 I caved and bought 2K, hoping to get my video game baseball fix. It took me all of a day to realize that it was horrible, especially compared to what I was used to with MVP 2005. The next year I had essentially gone two years without playing a baseball video game regularly. I had read a lot about MLB The Show and decided to finally give it a go. I went out and bought a PlayStation 3 and MLB The Show '08. Having never even played the game I was hoping that my investment of over $400 just to play a baseball video game would pay off. Let's just say it was a good decision.

My story is eerily similar to this, nearly word for word.