There comes a time when we need to just set some expectations right off the bat.  This is probably the worst Genesis sports game I've ever played.  Nobody tried on any level to unfuck that which was fucked, from the horridly counterintuitive fielding controls, the very worst Genesis music in history playing throughout the game (which at least you have the option of turning off), graphics that make you think you're playing an early NES game, cheap computer play, totally offense-oriented gameplay, generic playing field, generic team names, Clemens' steroid use, on and on.  It's truly reflective of the steroid era in all ways, from the outrageously high scores to inability for anybody watching or playing to really care.

Fact is, I ought to just stop this review right now, since nobody is trying.  Not the developers at Sculptured Software in any capacity other than showing up, not Sega for half-assedly slapping Clemens' name on crap, and certainly not Clemens himself in even trying to get a good lie going to a grand jury about his steroid use other than "I swear I didn't do it!" while balding and looking more like Bane wearing a Yankees uniform rather than a blacktual baseball player.  I hope he eventually gets the book thown at him, and if it's at all possible, I wish the prosecutors could add this game to the list of charges that should get him some prison time.   The only game that could have scraped the bottom of the barrel further would have been Marion Jones' Drug Free Track Meet - I Don't Consider Horse Hormones to Be Drugs 2000.

I give this game one Fuck You, Roger Clemens.  Out of syringe.

From the moment you turn this one on, you might just be thinking you're in for a Sega sports game made by EA right when that music hits. Once you start playing, however, you KNOW it.

Triple Play 96 is far superior to its 95 previous installments, from the graphics to the gameplay to the overall presentation. Every aspect of the game feels like the developers slaved away for ages until this got finished, and such effort should be rewarded, because this is a tremendous baseball game that doesn't do much of anything really wrong. There are only two things that hold this game back:

1. No matter how hard it tries, it still lacks the total masterpiece polish that made World Series Baseball '96 so great.
2. One of the only gameplay videos you'll find of it on the internet was done by my archenemy, the gayfat pedophile NecroVMX, who I hope dies of cancer.

Those gripes aside, it still brings as much to the table as any baseball game had ever done prior to this. You can customize damn near everything, from the difficulty to the schedule to the controls, and all the cool little features are made blacktually relevant because the gameplay itself is defense-oriented and entirely playable, with halfway competent computer playing and user-friendly fielding controls.  

Had this game been able to do the honors with the team licenses, as well as more detail in each team's respective playing field, it could have been THE quintessential baseball franchise game. But alas, the mid to late '90s were a time when we the consumer got our proverbial baseball video game massages with a happy ending from a slightly monkey-faced chinese-ish girl, and thus we have World Series Baseball as the steroided track star who blows away the competition by a full second, and even got away with lying to a grand jury about her steroid use. Triple Play 96, as good as it is, manages to be a distant 2nd, sitting at home crying itself to sleep at night and begging its husband for a pity fuck and never escaping its fate as "just not good enough to be the best."

Here's a great example of why you have GAME TESTERS to fuck around with your game before releasing anything to the public.  Other than insanely overhyped games that get rave reviews for no other reason than paying to advertise in a review magazine, sports games in particular have the unique ability to reach homes before almost every single one of the players in said homes finds at least one completely game-breaking flaw or bug to exploit, completely negating any positive gameplay review that was or will be published.  This is often because reviewers don't catch them, because most reviewers hate sports, know nothing about sports, and want to be done with the review as quickly as possible.  Such was the case with the infamous Madden '95 for the SNES.  Sometimes, the flaws are right in your face and don't even pretend not to destroy any legit enjoyment you would otherwise have unless the players decide to enforce your own honor system of rules amongst each other in a 2-player game.

MLBPA Baseball is every bit as infamous as Madden '95, but like any other sports game of the early to mid-'90s, you won't find a shred of evidence of this on the internet, because the many fans of sports video games hide in the sports forum crowds, calling each other fags, challenging each other to fights on Facebook at a location where neither party will show up because each will be caught with child pornography before the week is out.

MLBPA Baseball features authentic 1993 rosters, but not the MLB license itself, so you only get likenesses of team colors and the city name instead of the official team.  It's also very difficult to distinguish any of the locations where you might be playing, but those are nitpicky criticisms for 1992.  No, the REAL issue here is the gameplay.  More specifically, the ability to completely break the legitimacy of the gameplay by doing the following:

STEP 1: Pitch out the batter to first base.

STEP 2: While pitching to the next batter, continue to throw to first base until the last guy decides to take too big a lead off of first and gets thrown out (usually within 3 or 4 pitches).

STEP 3: Repeat.

It's a hilarious pattern, and what's even more frustrating is that playing any other way against the computer makes it nearly impossible to even get a single hit, hoping for a random home run every now and then.  Everything else is either very basic (a good thing) or, in the case of fielding, confusing as getting military instructions from a retarded dog (a bad thing unless you consider that some military authority figures are dumber than a retarded dog).  I could make countless other jokes and metaphors about playing this game and not getting to first base... IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN, but that would be childish and also inaccurate, since the anger you might feel after playing will be more than enough to STEAL HOME... IF YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

I mean sexual assault, in case you were wondering.

In what is yet another baseball game with an I-talian manager's name slapped on it, Tony's effort is far more complex and impressive in presentation than Lasorda's.  It's got stats galore, licensed team names, real player rosters, an abundance of control options for pitching and fielding, and play-by-play commentary.  On the downside, it's also the kind of game that happens to be SO INCREDIBLY OVERLY COMPLEX that you have to either sit down and read the instruction manual or make absolutely sure you've gone through the menu screens and adjust everything just to make sure you're the one playing the computer instead of making it play itself.  It's the kind of game that would have made you beg for tutorials at the time, which we have all been made aware by now as being like making a deal with the devil for a free Chicago Dog.  And to be fair, that Chicago Dog was probably really fucking tasty.

The choppy graphics don't quite offend the eyes as heinously as Dick Vitale's "Awesome, Baby!" College Hoops, but they get annoying very quickly.  And while subpar graphics do not always necessarily equate to subpar gameplay, you'll find this game to get rather easy, and scoring is so effortless that your star players' onscreen batting averages are only eclipsed by LaRussa's blood-alcohol level.  They took every high-tech idea they could find, threw them all on here, and ran with them all in one gameplay experience like fucking an autistic hooker.

All that said, it's still a fun little baseball game.  I could make plenty more clever little metaphors for how this game plays out, but to save the best one for last, I'll use his very own daughter, Bianca, who happens to be a cheerleader for the Oakland Raiders.  She's a hot little number right now, with lots of daddy issues you might be able to ignore while she's young and attractive, but give her 18 more years and she'll start to look a little weird and you won't have the patience to jump through her sexual hoops anymore, looking instead to "play ball" with the dominantly athletic black chick.  I give it

This game stinks of 1994.  Even worse, it stinks of 1994 ESPN.  This was before ESPN became Disney-fied and started going Hollywood and got way too big for their own good.

The important thing to know about ESPN, for non-sports fans, is that they don't actually MAKE anything.  They repackage shit and sell it as their own.  This is perfectly legal in the corporate world, and they add insult to injury by pulling original content made by independent creative minds using packaged material in a way that could be perceived as productive.

Even here, they're just slapping their name on something developed by a company called Park Place and released by Sony, another notorious ripoff company.  None of this game is innovative, original, or fun.  The only draw is the smooth animation, which was done better and sooner by many other baseball games.

The insultingly basic yet often confusing controls are made that much worse when the gameplay is hideously unbalanced towards scoring.  I guess it was the harbinger of the steroid era!

The audio sounds like something out of a text to speech demo, and the intros are done by Chris "I might have invented being gayfat" Berman.  The saddest part is that THIS game got to use the licensed team names out of all the other far more deserving titles.  I give it my current lowest sports game rating: One Crudely Drawn Penis in Mark May's Mouth.

In a surprise twist, yet another of the Genesis line of sports games with a name slapped on manages to be very, very good, yet STILL not quite up to the level of the very, very GREAT World Series Baseball ’95 released that same year.

The first thing you’ll notice is the intro screen, which sported some terrific graphics at the time. I can go as far as to say this is probably the best-looking 16-bit baseball game I’ve ever played. Gameplay is kept fairly simple and PITCHING/DEFENSE ORIENTED (how bout that?), although pitching feels a little more overly complex (and harder to fool the opponent) than WSB, and bunting is a painstaking task of combining buttons and directions instead of simply designating it to one of the other two unused buttons.

Missing the MLB license, as should be familiar with many of these types of games, you are kept selecting locations instead of official teams, although it’s fairly easy to distinguish this time around. Also, although it still does an okay job, the stadiums don’t quite feel as "on location" as in WSB. You’ll find yourself playing in Wrigley Field at night far too often, and no self-respecting White Sox fan should have to go without some angle shot where Chinatown is in the background, and with the Revenge of Shinobi "Chinatown" theme playing.

PSYCHO TIP: Pick the AL Chicago team with Frank Thomas on it. You know, the guy the game is named after. As a bonus, you can even play as Ozzie Guillen! Definitely worth a bargain bin price. I give it one Ozzie Guillen Gay Kiss.

Anybody who knows me knows that when I refer to somebody as fat as Tommy Lasorda, I follow the old adage: "Nobody is that fat and not gay." However, in the case of Lasorda himself, such is not the case, because his fatness is eclipsed only by his I-talianness, and we all know it is physically impossible for somebody that I-talian to be gay. The fact that he is a hideous beast of a man (redundant in the case of I-talians) is beside the point.

This phenomenon has no effect on the game itself, however; that’s mostly because it’s just another Sega game circa 1989 that has a name slapped on it and shipped out. In this game’s case, it makes little difference either way, because it’s just a fun little baseball title with no team licenses of any sort, and bare bones, basic gameplay. You won’t find a lot of depth, focus on stats, or deep strategy here. It’s very easy to pick up and play, but the controls can get tricky once somebody hammers a line drive and the announcer calls out "SHORTSTOP!" and you’re supposed to react in that split second it goes to overhead mode and you realize it’s like you’re back in little league and a ball flies past you while you got distracted by that bee stuck in the grass with its wing damaged. But somehow, you picture Tommy Lasorda and his uncanny ability to hawk diet products despite looking every bit as fat and hideous (I-talian) as always, without any visible results, and you realize everything will be okay. Just picture yourself as a weak woman, and Tommy is hugging you in your hour of need, shortly before he throws a full can of beer at you, calls you a cunt and starts screaming racial slurs at the TV. I give it