Home Run King

"Alternatively, this game could be called ‘Hank Aaron and His Worst Nightmare’"

INTRODUCTION
Sega is kind of like the social butterfly of the gaming industry. They’ll do whatever they perceive is right to fit in with a console’s existing games. This includes following preconceived misconceptions, and actually furthering them. The release of Home Run King is such an example. While the other consoles get the sim World Series Baseball, the Nintendo GameCube gets a kiddy, arcade-styled game, designed with simplicity in mind, for younger players. Virtua Fighter Quest, dumbed-down Skies of Arcadia, no Panzer Dragoon game, the list goes on and on, about Sega, trying to help Nintendo, is actually screwing them over. But in spite of, if not because of, these industry ideas, Home Run King has been released for the GameCube, and, for better or worse, it will change baseball games on consoles forever.

GAMEPLAY--6
Home Run King is an arcade baseball game. It markets itself as such, and it tries for the most part to act as such. But in some aspects of the game it just cannot decide what it wants to be. Arcade baseball titles generally have a hitting interface that condones offense. They take the guesswork out of hitting, so that you know the location of the next pitch. While Home Run King does not go the High Heat Baseball route and make you say where you are going to swing before the ball is even delivered, you have to follow the ball’s trajectory and swing where it crosses the plate. This is not a bad thing, but is not what you’d normally find in a arcade baseball title. This takes some getting used to, and as a result, your games will probably be lower scoring affairs. Not exactly your typical arcade baseball game, huh?

Fielding is a chore in Home Run King. And for once, I would like to see a player just stand under a fly ball and catch it. Every catch is a dive, a basket catch, a leap, never normal. And why the hell can’t the shortstop throw normally to first base on routine plays? Because every shortstop seems to have the need to make the highlight reel, and now every play is one of those amazing leaping saves that Omar Vizquel makes about twice a year. Talk about taking the magic out of the web gem. Ugh.

GRAPHICS--9
Another thing that differs Home Run King from your classic arcade game are the graphics. Arcade games usually, well, are kind of cartoonish, and do not stress realism all that much. Home Run King, however, is one of the best looking sports games ever, and it is all quite realistic, excluding the fact that all advertisements in the stadiums have been changed to say Sega, and all scoreboards merely flash team logos repetitively. Other than that, the stadium detail is absolutely fantastic. There are even different styles of foul poles for the different ballparks. Environments are often neglected in sports games in favor of highly-detailed player models, and it is nice to see that Sega gave equal treatment here.

The treatment is certainly equal, because the player models look great too. There are little details, wrinkles on player’s uniforms, stitches on hats, that look hand drawn. We finally have polygonal characters that have details like sprites, a feat that has been a long time in the making. Also, player’s faces seem to be rendered in great detail and with superb accuracy. After dealing with EA Sport’s crappy facial models for a long time, this is a very welcome change. My only real problem with the graphics in Home Run King is how goofy some of the players look in their batting stages look. I mean, I know Jeff Bagwell looks weird in real life, but in this game it looks as if he was sitting on a chair, and his back half fell through the seat. And Torii Hunter has his arms stretched out to the heavens, completely vertical, and he chops down at the ball in his swing. The swing is so bad, it is almost like watching Charles Barkley playing golf.

MUSIC--5
SOUND--2
The music in Home Run King is just like that you would find in any other mediocre sports game. Cheap out takes of pep band songs slightly altered to avoid copyright infringement populate the menus in Sega’s arcade venture, and nothing really stands out. The only new thing Wow tried was to insert a seventh inning stretch with a techno version of ‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame’ featured. Yes, it is interesting the first time or two that you play it, but after that, it is just a waste of three seconds as you press the ‘B’ button to skip it. My last complaint about the music is the lack of a tribute to the great Harry Caray at Wrigley Field. Do something different there. Pan the view out to his statue, have everyone in the stands put on those silly glasses, or better yet have him sing it to break up the monotonous electronic beat.

Even though it is quite typical, the music in Home Run King manages to be better than the sound. The effects themselves are not that bad. There are varying degrees of strength when the bat strikes the ball, which is quite a good thing. It helps you gauge how far your ball will travel. The other sound effects and noises on the menus work well. The problem here is with the commentary. It is not easy to get decent baseball commentary in a video game, but this crap is inexcusable. Statements are incoherent. There are sometimes two second pauses between words in a sentence. And very little of it makes sense. The variety in these blurbs is also severely lacking, so you will here the same phrase over and over again, sometimes as many as three times in an inning.

CONTROL--1
Home Run King is quite possibly the worst controlling baseball ever created. I should find someplace to begin. We shall start by bashing the infield control interface. Why in the hell should you have to press two buttons every time you want to throw the ball to second base? To turn a double play, you have to press four buttons. You have to press which base you want to through to, on the Control Pad, followed by ‘A’ to through the ball. This takes way too long, and it results in many easy outs being run out by the batters, extending the innings of your opponents, and making Home Run King even more one-dimensional towards the offensive end. Screw defense, you’re gonna get screwed anyway. Stock up on players like Jose Canseco and Rafael Palmerio, and you shall be fine.

I also never thought I’d play a baseball game that manages to cancel out the strengths of Randy Johnson, but Home Run King has managed to make Miguel Batista a better player than the Big Unit. A great part of this is because of the pitching interface. I like the method of selection in the first place, which is done by pressing one of the directions before each pitch. The longer the arrow in a direction, the more effective a pitch. This does not really seem to work in Exhibition Mode, though, which makes selecting pitches there more effort. You have to hold down your direction, and press some buttons until the game responds, rather than just a quick click to the right.

Randy Johnson is canceled out because he has only three pitches. Yes, the bars for all three are nearly maxed out, but you only have three pitches, which makes it too easy for the computer to predict which pitch you are going to through yet. And using the varying degrees of pitch strength (Normal, the ‘A’ button, Power, the ‘Y’ button, and Slow, the ‘X’ button) can change your pitch completely around. If you choose a slider, but pitch it slowly, it sometimes morphs into a change-up. Of course, it does not always do this, which confuses you to no end. Miguel Batista has four or five pitching meters. Sure, all are fairly short, but that variety helps him out duel a pitcher like Brad Radke with ease.

FUN--3
Controlling may be the most serious problem in Home Run King, but there are plenty of others to go around, all of which greatly detract from the fun of the game. First of all, the rosters are quite up to date. However, Sega completely forgot about some players, and I’m not talking about unknown rookies either. They forgot former all-star Rick Reed. Instead of Reed being the Twin’s fourth starter they have some created character, O. Pace. If they mean Orlando Pace the offensive lineman, well, then they made the guy awfully skinny.

I’ll stick with nitpicking about rosters and players for a little bit. First of all, trading between teams sucks horribly. Not only are deals automatically accepted, but the trading is not in Season Mode! Instead, when you trade it affects rosters over the whole game. Not only that, but there is no way that I found to reset the rosters to their current status. Trading should really be in Season Mode, and an option should be included to load your season’s roster in. Sega really did not think that one out at all.

My last bit of nitpicking about the players has to do with the create-a-player. You can customize almost every nuance of your player’s appearance. But you never give a player attributes. You cannot tailor your player to his position. He is given the same default rankings as any other created player. If you use a speed game, and you do not want your shortstop to hit for power, you cannot lower the power rankings and raise the speed attribute. You cannot set any attributes, and all of your players are exactly alike. Yet another stupid move on Sega’s part.

Hey, I never said I was done nitpicking in general. Whoever translated this game deserves to be fired on the spot. Whenever a pitcher comes to the mound for the first time in the game, a window with information about him appears. This window contains gems of information such as ‘feature a fastball’ and, when speaking of Mark Buehrle, ‘rely on a good curveball.’ First of all, when has a pitcher not had a fastball in his repertoire? That’s only commenting on how asinine the statement is, rather than getting into the obvious grammatical errors. And, about Mr. Buehrle; usually when one announces that they have a good curveball, they do not promptly throw nine consecutive ones. But that rule of logic does not apply to Mark. Neither does the rule of logic that one cannot give up seven consecutive home runs, even when the opposition knows exactly what is coming. Hell, logic was defied twice. Take that Einstein!

Now in a game entitled Home Run King, you would expect Home Run Derbies to be a big selling point. Yes, your basic Home Run Derby is featured. But it is far too hard to hit home runs! I mean, I hit one home run with Barry Bonds in a derby. I managed ten with Jeff Bagwell and eight with Richie Sexson, but only one for Barry Bonds. Either there is something statistically wrong about the player of Barry Bonds, or else Home Run Derbies have some quirks of their own. Either way, Home Run Derbies did not prove to be all that fun to play.

Now let us progress to the stats engine in Season Mode. First of all, the about the same number of stats are featured in Home Run King as were featured in RBI Baseball - on the original Nintendo. You cannot sort the stats. You have to physically scroll down the list to see who leads the league in home runs, because hitting statistics are sorted by average. I never did find out how to get to the pitching statistics in four days. And do not even ask why I did not look in the instruction book, as the ‘instructions’ were more incoherent than the drunk babblings of Lars Ulrich. And he’s hard to understand when he’s sober.

CHALLENGE--MEDIUM TO HIGH
For a game without difficulty levels, Home Run King is awfully difficult. You will find it a struggle to beat a team like the Detroit Tigers even with a spruced up Diamondbacks roster. But the interesting AI choices do not stop with the difficulty. For instance, in my season, during the All-Star game, the computer left Bartolo Colon in for seven innings. You just do not leave a pitcher in for that long during the All-Star game, especially when you have people like Freddy Garcia languishing on the bench. (I however, used every pitcher and roster member, and played the game like it should be played. I lost, 9-5.)

REPLAY VALUE--LOW TO MEDIUM
Usually when I rent a game, that game is all I play for the weekend. Not the case with Home Run King. Sometimes the absurdity of the season just pissed me off so much that I felt I never wanted to play it again. Of course, I did play it again, because I wanted to get my money’s worth out of my rental. Trading detracts a lot from the game, because after you trade to help your teams in your season, it is not as fun to play exhibition games, when the team rosters are all out of whack. And after simulating an 160 games in a season, of which I won 125 games, I was promptly swept by the Atlanta Braves in the post season. What the hell is up with that? (Those remaining two games, the ones I actually played, were losses, just so you know.) Maybe that is an flaw with the artificial intelligence, but it surely did not make me want to play Home Run King any more.

PROS
*Some aspects will change baseball games forever.
*A great idea for a pitching interface.
*Superb player models.

CONS
*Poorly thought-out artificial intelligence.
*The worst commentary this side of Bob Costas.
*Extremely simplistic stats/information engine.

CONCLUSION
Let’s be blunt. I expected more out of Sega than a half-assed effort, and I did not get any more than that so I’m rather annoyed with them. Home Run King could have been one of the best baseball games on the market, had just another two months of development (coupled with some decent commentators) been added to the cycle. Instead you end up with a baseball game that is graphically impressive and pushes a few (very few) limits which Triple Play, All-Star Baseball, and the rest will have to follow; a game that shall be forgotten in the annals of gaming history like Baseball Stars, Sports Illustrated Baseball, and Grand Slam before it.

OVERALL--4

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 04/15/02, Updated 04/15/02