0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - 3D Baseball

                               

3D Baseball as you would expect by the name is a baseball game developed by Crystal Dynamics and was released on the Playstation 1 and Sega Saturn in 1996 and 1997 with an October and November release for those consoles in North America and a January, February release in Japan for the game, the game never made it’s way to Europe, the game features CNN sportscaster Van Earl Wright as the announcer.

The game used a brand new animation process called Real Motion control which involved motion capture, designer Sam Player explained the concept in an interview, The reason everything always ends up looking choppy in [most motion capture] games is that the machines can't store all the frames necessary for the full animation, and they end up showing every fifth frame or so. What we do is build polygonal models, break each model up into joints, and then follow the curve of each joint in motion. Then we save those curves instead of each individual frame of animation.

The game was pretty advanced for the time with over 700 players on the games roster which included their own statistics and batting stances with around 50 included in the game, each team also played at their own stadium which was rendered after it’s real life counterpart.

The game has a season mode which is a full season of baseball with players having the option for a more arcady setting or they can opt to be the general manager of the team, this requires the player to choose the team, the pitching rotation, substitute batters and runners as well as trade players, which allows players to form their own dream team from the large pool of players available.

Sports game no story present.

Review scores were pretty consistent across the board for 3D Baseball, Game Revolution in their grading system gave the game a solid B+ while GameSpot awarded the game 7.6/10 with the review concluding, Crystal Dynamics seems to be heading in the right direction with this title.

However, it's still a step behind the competition of Sega's World Series Baseball 2 and EA's Triple Play 97 - not to mention Sony's MLB Pennant Race. The game looks and plays as well as the other baseball titles out there, but lacks the polish that the others' major yearly updates bring.

3D Baseball is an excellent rookie attempt, and future updates they could easily become contenders for the MVP award.

At the lower end of the ratings for 3D Baseball, Electric Playground gave the game a very average 6/10 while AllGame and GamePro offered up a 5/10 for the game.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit five online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com,  eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific but from a podcast I listen too I have heard they have a huge stock of older games, I will also be including Ebay.com as well

So lets get down to business. with Gamedude, they will by your copy of the game for $3, if you are looking for a copy of the game from Gamedude then you are looking at an $8 for the game. Moving onto Retrogames.co.uk and no surprise here with the game not getting a Europe release the game is not available on the site.

On to eStarland.com who are currently out of stock for 3D Baseball, when it is in stock you are looking at a sale price of between $5.10 and $8.50 while the trade in price for a copy of the game is at $3.50.

Moving on to Amazon.com and this title is pretty scarce at the time of writing this there are no new copies of the game available and just five used copies of the game on sale however I don’t think the game is that rare, with used prices of the game ranging between $2.90 and $9.16 the latter is in fact the worst quality copy of the game that was on sale.

For a good quality used copy or better you can pick one up for between $6 and $8 which is between £4.50 and £6 in the UK, assuming you have a console capable of playing the game, for the EU region you will be looking at between €5 up to just short of €7 while the Japanese market you will be looking at between 664¥ up to 886¥. For a good quality used copy of the game.

Finally on to Ebay.com which is light on copies of the game with just two on sale, a copy that is just the disc will set you back $4.49, while a complete copy of the game is priced up at $9.15, which converts to around £7 in the UK,  €7.75 in the EU region, and in Japan you would be looking at someone around 1013¥.

Written by

P J Gibbon