Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball Super Nintendo Review

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marioguy2
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Joined: April 3rd, 2016, 10:52 am

Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball Super Nintendo Review

Postby marioguy2 » April 4th, 2016, 7:44 am

Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball is a fun Super Nintendo game that was released in 1994. This game is an incredibly fantastic game to play due to my high interest in baseball. This is the best baseball video game that I have played to date. This game will seem difficult at first. However, with practice comes mastering what the game has to offer.

Graphics: Ken Griffey Jr. is an arcade game, right down to how the character models look. The characters look detailed enough so that the team name is shown on the jerseys. The color scheme for the players is genuine to the actual team colors in the major leagues. There are details in the field that let even an arcade game look splendid. For example, Wrigley Field, located in Chicago, has the ivy on the wall, like the real life Cubs. Some of the details in the stadiums look mesmerizing due to the realism factor to real life. Fenway Park still has that giant wall in left field, for example. There are graphical limitations for this game that cannot be overlooked. For most stadiums, there is a blue "blob" in certain areas of certain ballparks due to the game not putting in every building or every piece of construction in the stadium. Those areas of "blue" are not terrible because this is an arcade game. To finish, the players have different batting stances, which is spectacular in comparison to other Super Nintendo baseball games, which only include two to three different stances at most. This game includes at least, a whopping, twelve different stances to which the game deserves major credit there. Oh yeah, the fans move, cheer similarly, and the fans repeat in terms of look, which is expected for a Super Nintendo sports game. Overall, the graphics are spectacular, and the best part is the variance of the stadiums and batting stances.

Gameplay: This game takes practice to learn, but the game is not difficult to control. The controls are very responsive, and the players move rather smoothly; these things translate into one of the best baseball games for the Super Nintendo immediately. The batting control in Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball is king of control because it is also very responsive, although the game has to be practiced to master all this fun. Strikeouts versus the computer should be rare for the experienced. Even beginners should find the batting more intuitive than other games for the SNES. That said, it will take fine-tuning to get more hits and less outs. The position of the batter is crucial to where the ball gets hit. The gameplay, overall, is the master arcade baseball game for the Super Nintendo due to its responsiveness.

Sound: The sound is tremendous. The music sounds like traditional baseball music. One knows that this is a baseball game just on the music alone. The umpires speak, and the voice of the umpires is forceful and funny when listening to them for the first few times. The sound of the ball hitting the bat is arcade sounding, which is not the most realistic sound in the world. The game doesn't have that many sound effects to speak of; the ball, fans cheering, and the hilarious sound of the player smashing against the wall on defense should be it for the game. When the game has sound, the sound bit is on par to the other arcade baseball games. Overall, the music is relevant to baseball and superior to other Super Nintendo baseball arcades by far. The sound bits are a little addition to the game as well.

Presentation: There is no Player's licence here. That means that, besides Griffey Jr, there are no actual player's names in the game. The game counters it by adding in an edit section so that players of the game can keep up stats similar to each athlete's real life statistics. There are four different modes in the most simplistic of menus in video games. Players of the game do get actual team names from the MLB licence though, and that is perfect for the presentation. It would have been much worse to play the game with made up team names. The fun is the playing of major league teams in the realistic stadiums. The menu is easy to advance through because of the vertical organization of the modes. One can load up a game within one minute due to the simplistic menu system, which is a major plus. The intro screen is a powerful view of Ken Griffey Jr. hitting a home run. The game does not have the fulfillment of options that would have made the game marvelous. The game has no instant replay, which is very saddening as It would have been nice to view a monstrous bomb of 550 feet homer from some big-time athlete. Another negative point is that I can only play at Camden Yards, home of the Baltimore Orioles, for the home run derby. It would have been fantastic to have a home run derby at Yankees stadium or Fenway Park due to their iconic status in baseball. On the other hand, the fact there is an all star game and home run derby shows that the creators thought of the ways in which players can have fun while playing the game. Other baseball games don't have those options at all! Overall, the presentation should convince a lot of baseball fans to play this game due to the variety of modes, a home run derby, and a simplistic menu system overall. There is also multiplayer as well.

Replay Value/Fun Value: If it this category was looked at just from replay value, this game has some. Most sports games don't have much replay value criteria due to the lack of story and rewards from completing the game. This game gets a middle of the road grade for replay value because it has all the modes a SNES baseball game should expect and all-star game to boot. The game is so fun to play that this game is a recommendation to all sports fans and a handful of non-baseball experts or lovers. From the strikeout animations to season mode to the home run derby, there is a lot to look for in this game. The combination of the user-friendly experience with home run statistics make this a perfect choice for a baseball video game.

Pros:-Simplistic menu system
-Splendid control
-Contains an All-Star mode
-The strikeout animations are humorous

Cons: -No instant replay of any kind
-Home run derby must be played at Camden Yards

Score A

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JustLikeHeaven
Posts: 333
Joined: April 8th, 2015, 9:35 am

Re: Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball Super Nintendo Review

Postby JustLikeHeaven » April 5th, 2016, 1:51 pm

Nice look back at one of the better baseball games in existence. I always LOVED the exaggerated, muscle-bound, batters in this game. Really the only thing holding this back is the lack of the MLB license.

I remember renting this one multiple times with my friends for some fierce, two player action. Great game. A perfect example of why sports games should be more arcade-oriented because most sports simulations fade into obscurity as new iterations come out.

Tron
Posts: 870
Joined: April 9th, 2015, 8:02 pm

Re: Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball Super Nintendo Review

Postby Tron » April 10th, 2016, 11:33 pm

Good game, but I think it's overrated. The graphics are sweet. My problem is the batting seemed so inconsistent. I never really got the feel for it. How I hit the ball seemed so random. In a game like Baseball Stars (NES) I can usually tell when I've made good contact and the ball travels predictably so. In Ken Griffey I'd expect a weak dribbler to be something that I really got ahold of and Id get home runs off hits that I expected to be dribblers.


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