Question About High Heat Baseball

[yount19]

I already have High Heat 2002 for the PC but I am considering purchasing 2003 as well. 2004 has the best graphics but it has no classic stadiums so I will pass on 2004. Any suggestions if 2003 is worth the purchase?

(Mr. Knight, I hope you stumble on to this thread as I know that you were a huge High Heat fan and you can potentially ultimately make this decision for me)

[Knight165]

Re: Question About High Heat Baseball

I already have High Heat 2002 for the PC but I am considering purchasing 2003 as well. 2004 has the best graphics but it has no classic stadiums so I will pass on 2004. Any suggestions if 2003 is worth the purchase?

(Mr. Knight, I hope you stumble on to this thread as I know that you were a huge High Heat fan and you can potentially ultimately make this decision for me)

yount;

Unbelievably....I did stumble upon this post on the very day I just finished editing the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers team for The Show!

As for your question.....it seems like you already know to stay away from 2004....for PC as they removed some features....and a big one in mouse support(what a pain to transition from mouse/keyboard to a controller for editing.....inevitable ...but at the time...groan)

I honestly can't remember if there was a big jump from 2002 to 2003 to warrant upgrading for anything other than it was the "newer" version. Sorry about that.
I do know that 2001 and 2002 was a great time for baseball gaming and I did create quite a few historical sets for both of those versions. I don't know if anyone still has them and hosts the files though(I don't have them any longer )

Perhaps I'll dig up both versions and see if there was any big difference....but I seem to remember trying to install 2002 and had no luck with it running properly on my current PC.

M.K.
Knight165

[yount19]

Re: Question About High Heat Baseball

Thanks for the reply Knight. I am currently playing a 1989 mod that I downloaded a while back but I can't for the life of me remember where I got it from!? I did find a site called "Baseball Sim Central" and although I do have an account and am able to log in, it will not let me download anything as I am "not authorized" to do so.

Anything that you can dig-up for me would be awesome and if you don't get to it due to time constraints, no biggy!

I have actually been letting the 1989 HH2002 season play on my laptop while also watching my 13' the Show CPU vs CPU/GM season play on my HD television. My wife (god bless her) laughs at me and asks which one I am paying attention to and I say both. After all, I am a baseball whore:wink:

My season on the show has been fantastic and you will be thrilled to know that the Mets are playing in the 1 game playoff round against the Braves. There pitching staff was simply outstanding in the regular season and I am rooting for them to go far into the post season. In there season finale they had a September call-up (last name Robles) take the hill against my home town Brewers and he went 8 innings, gave up 4 hits, 1 walk, 6 K's and 0 ER.

I did remove all of the "cheaters" from my season completely and buried them in the free agent pool with significant downgrades to their abilities.

[GlennN]

Re: Question About High Heat Baseball

I loved High Heat 2001 and 2002, but I found 2003 to be the start of a decline (which was accelerated exponentially by 2004). I have been using MLB 2k12 on PC, and The Show on my Vita, but nothing since High Heat has risen to that level. Sad when the great franchises die . . .

[yount19]

Re: Question About High Heat Baseball

I loved High Heat 2001 and 2002, but I found 2003 to be the start of a decline (which was accelerated exponentially by 2004). I have been using MLB 2k12 on PC, and The Show on my Vita, but nothing since High Heat has risen to that level. Sad when the great franchises die . . .

I have MLB 2K11 on the pc. What is the differences between 2K11 and 2K12? Anything significant?

[Money99]

Re: Question About High Heat Baseball

Didn't MS buy the rights to HH?
If that's the case, I wonder why they did, but did nothing with the game?

[jyoung]

Re: Question About High Heat Baseball

High Heat was developed by 3DO, which went bankrupt in 2003.

However, Microsoft does hold the rights to the High Heat name.

They would still have to hire someone to develop it, though. I don't believe Microsoft has an in-house sports team anymore.

[elguapo79]

Re: Question About High Heat Baseball

If I remember correctly, 2003 had the better sim engine. Also, wasn't that the year they added the cutter?


Speaking of simming -- if you're interested in the sim aspect, there are potentially 1 or 2 teams open at mlbcsimleague.com.

Can't beat it for fun. There's a learning curve, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist, either.

[metal134]

Re: Question About High Heat Baseball

I remember the 03 version being a bit of a disappointment, though I'll be damned if I can remember why exactly.

[GlennN]

Re: Question About High Heat Baseball

I have MLB 2K11 on the pc. What is the differences between 2K11 and 2K12? Anything significant?

I skipped 11, and went from 2k10 to 2k12. And, yet, still there wasn't much difference.

[elguapo79]

Re: Question About High Heat Baseball

I remember the 03 version being a bit of a disappointment, though I'll be damned if I can remember why exactly.

Hey, metal! You ever play Carcassonne on ios anymore? My wife, inthenet, and I always have a game going. Tried to invite you once.

Any interest in a HH sim league?

[Lucas718]

Re: Question About High Heat Baseball

2004 was the best looking game of the series, but it had problems. Others have mentioned the lack of mouse support, which was a big deal at the time, but the biggest is the lack of any sort of position player fatigue. I don't remember if it didn't exist or if it was so minor that players never really got tired, but essentially your starters could play all 162 games without getting fatigued. It also didn't have one-pitch mode as a selectable option, but you could work around it by starting a season in 2003, turning on one-pitch, and then importing the season into 2004 and the one-pitch setting would be retained.

2003 is a better game, but the graphics are terrible compared to 2004. 2003 & 2002 look almost identical and the changes between the two are so minor that you really have to wonder what they spent their time working on in the year between the two games. 2003 does display the team name in a player's history, whereas 2002 and earlier just displayed "MAJORS". As is usually the case, the mods that were created made these games so much better. I'm not sure how anyone could still be playing with the default setup.

One of them (2002 or 2003) had the "Wrigley Field bug". I think what happened there was in certain situations a fly ball in Wrigley would never come down. I believe it was fixed in a patch, but that patch then disabled the ability to do mound visits.

Those games were good, and I still play them occasionally, but there was always something that kept each version from being great. I think if they could have combined the guts of 2003 with the graphics of 2004 then they would have really had something.

[Mingsu]

Re: Question About High Heat Baseball

But the gameplay of the 2004 is the best

[Splitter77]

Re: Question About High Heat Baseball

the one with sammy sosa was my fav baseball game of all time.
with the updated patches, the stats were endless and you could start a career with fantasy draft of fictional players.

played that game from 2001 until like 2009 i think.

[Skeleton V]

Re: Question About High Heat Baseball

2004 was the best looking game of the series, but it had problems. Others have mentioned the lack of mouse support, which was a big deal at the time, but the biggest is the lack of any sort of position player fatigue. I don't remember if it didn't exist or if it was so minor that players never really got tired, but essentially your starters could play all 162 games without getting fatigued.

Actually, several years after the game was released and nobody cared any more, I discovered that the CPU did rest its starters, but in such a bizarre fashion (which was clearly just a workaround for some problem that was never fixed) that the game still counted it as a game played. Essentially the game would put the player-to-be-rested in the lineup and take it out before the game started. He would show up right at the top of the boxscore as having 0 ABs, despite never stepping foot on the field. Using the box score utility, you would see every player would have many - dozens in the case of old catchers - of these phantom appearances. But on the stats screen it would show 162 games played for all of them.

I guess the CPU did this to stop itself using the player as a PH later in the game, because fatigue certainly did exist in the game - but you could only see it as a value if you used dangerz's editor. I suppose the idea was that you would have to use your judgement as to when to sit players, based on their performance, rather than seeing a concrete value in the game.


I am aware that is rather sad that I remember all of that. And man, this thread has really made me feel old. I seriously cannot believe it was 10 years ago that game came out.