Evolution of Hitting Systems in Baseball Games

[sroz39]

Give me a "Hitter's Eye" type feature in The Show, and I will agree that it is the greatest hitting system out there. I hate using guess pitch but I'm forced to because it is a little too difficult for me to distinguish pitch types at times.

Obviously, make sure it's an option that can be turned on and off. I understand its not everyone's cup of tea.

[mKoz26]

Yo, SDWinder, calm down. This isn't 2k vs. The Show. That's not what these articles are about. Move on. Now, back on track. Very nice article.

[baa7]

As far as pure zone hitting goes, HH was the best. The Show can't be referred to as Most Realistic Ever given hit results often have very little to do with bat placement. I can aim low and away and still hit high and inside pitches in The Show. Couldn't ever do that with HH. Or with MLB 2K5's zone hitting for that matter, which I consider as good as HH's zone hitting. 2K5 definitely should have gotten a mention in this article.

[MultiThreat]

I second the lack of inclusion of Bases Loaded. I grew up playing it (and Baseball Stars, for that matter), and loved the location-based hitting. There was nothing else like it for some time. I downloaded it for the Wii the other day and was surprised that the hitting actually held up fairly well (although not much else did, but meh).

[Loser09]

Should have had a mention of Power Pros. It has in my opinion the best interface out there. Cursor based, and the cursor varies on both hitter ability and current situation. How can someone honestly say that timing should be the only factor in hitting? If that were accurate why would anyone in baseball bother with breaking balls?

[ComfortablyLomb]

I'll probably be criticized for saying this but I think The Show's hitting system is a cheat. The trick to a proper hitting system is putting the batter in complete control of the outcome but all the batter does in The Show is improve his (or her!) chance of a good outcome (ie a hard hit ball). MVP's was too simplistic and quirky but at least when I was dead perfect on a pitch I knocked the snot out of it. That's not the case in The Show and I don't know if I'll ever warm up to it. The results may be correct but the developers got there the wrong way.

[StormJH1]

I'm surprised that World Series Baseball (for Genesis) gets so frequently overlooked. That game was revolutionary for its time (like 1995, maybe?) in so many ways. The cursor batting system, which the article attributes to All-Star Baseball 1999, was actually an innovation of World Series Baseball. And I'm not 100% sure, but I think the cursor size varied with hitter ability (as it does in PowerPros today). Also, you had the choice of Contact, Normal, or Power swing, which you also see in games today. I think that a good cursor system is the best effort videogame baseball has made at "simulating" the experience of lining up a pitch and swinging at it with gameplay that is fun and accessible. 2k9 tried to implement cursor batting as an option, but it was extremely inconsistent, and nearly unplayable. And their swing stick, much like many zone hitting mechanisms, only gives you half of the batting equation, which is the timing aspect--so it's basically softball.

[ComfortablyLomb]

The cursor definitely changed in size with difficulty on the highest level in WSB '95 and it changed for individual batters depending on whether they were better at contact hitting or power hitting too. I'm not sure about the first version of that game though. I seem to recall it had a circle instead of a bar like in the later versions.