Ken Griffey Jr’s Slugfest

Developer: Angel Studios Publisher: Nintendo

Released: May 10, 1999 Rated: E 7/10

I suppose it’s always a little disappointing when the yearly update doesn’t add anything big or outright noticeable to the gameplay of your sports franchise, but when the baseline is as good as something like Angel Studios’ Ken Griffey Jr. baseball title, fixing what isn’t broken is also a reasonable route to take on only the first follow-up. With even less than a year to get the job done, Slugfest’s biggest change is a wildly different coat of paint, and the biggest disappointment for the series is that we would never see another Nintendo-published MLB title after Junior’s last ride here.

Make way for turn-of-the-millennium tech sheen, with a sleek new metallic menu style that’s a little dated to look back on, but all the presentation in Slugfest is extremely of-its-time, and there’s a level of charm to be had in that. There’s not a lot from this visual style that affects gameplay once you’re at the park, but if there’s one way to tell the difference between this game and the 1998 version, it’s in the batting. Instead of a yellow circle to position within the strike zone when taking a swing, there’s an elongated, bat-shaped cursor that indicates exactly where the barrel will pass over the plate and where the sweet spot is to make contact. It’s a lot like the GameCube controller in that it looks wrong at first, but once you actually try it out, it makes a surprising amount of sense in spite of the odd shape. Surprising that more games didn’t adopt this given how much information it conveys compared to a circle.

Manny Ramirez pictured as he decides that he could get used to this place.

One tangible gameplay feature added for this iteration is the option to create your own player. A staple of sports games a couple years on from this point, this is an early, pretty simple version of a creation suite. Still, not everybody offered this at the time, so being able to have this in a game this solid from the time is pretty cool.

Other game modes return, of course, including season, playoffs, and home run derby. A basic smattering of modes that hits all the expected notes. What’s important is that the gameplay remains polished and easy to pick up, just like the year before. Voiceover work by longtime Mariners commentator Dave Niehaus as well as Junior himself return in a similar capacity as before, with short clips popping up here and there after big plays. Griffey still doesn’t really know what he’s doing in the recording studio, though, with more flat lines that don’t really convey any of the excitement they’re going for. I do wish we got a bit more from Niehaus because of this, but it’s such a small part of the game anyway, it doesn’t make a huge difference.

Mr. Burns easily could have moved Daryl Strawberry over to left field and kept his power hitter in the lineup, just sayin’.

If there had been some genuine tangible additions and tune-ups on offer, Slugfest would be the easy choice for the best baseball title, just for improving on what’s arguably the best one in the whole library. Because of that, the top spot is still largely up for grabs between anything from Nintendo or Acclaim’s respective series, and it’s almost easier to choose Major League Baseball Featuring Ken Griffey Jr. simply for the more classic-looking presentation. Still, a hell of a game of baseball that moves quick and has plenty of polish, a solid choice for a little bit of the national pastime.

Continuing Legacy

Oh, those were the days, back when Nintendo made their own sports titles and, well, there was some legitimate competition to the whole genre. Not about to get into a whole spiel about that here, but the fact that Nintendo themselves could offer official licensed and exclusive basketball and baseball titles that were consistently the best option on their own systems was a great thing. The GameCube only got a single Courtside title in 2002, while Slugfest (not to be confused with Midway’s over-the-top offering from the Blitz line starting in 2003) was the last baseball game they ever published. There was almost a comeback at the tail end of the GameCube era with Nintendo Pennant Chase Baseball, but it never saw the light of day.