- MVP Baseball series
"MVP Baseball" is a
baseball game series published byEA Sports . In2003 , it became the official successor to EA's long-running "Triple Play Baseball"; however, it bore little more than a graphical similarity to that series, which had been much maligned in its final years.Players
Until 2005, the game featured all players in the
Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA), as well as fictionalized counterparts for players who are not in the union, such asJon Dowd in place ofBarry Bonds ."MVP Baseball 2004" featured a unique addition to any baseball game, allowing users to play as the Minor League affiliations of Major League teams, a feature that was expanded in the following year. The game featured
Randy Johnson ,Miguel Tejada ,Albert Pujols , andManny Ramírez on its cover. Of those four, Tejada and Pujols have wonMost Valuable Player (MVP) awards during their careers, and the other two have been named MVPs of the World series.In 2005, in response to EA Sports' exclusive license with the
National Football League andESPN ,Take-Two Interactive signed an exclusive third-party licensing contract with Major League Baseball (MLB), MLBPA andMLBAM to produce MLB games. The agreement, which runs from Spring 2006 to 2012, allows for the console manufacturers Sony, Microsoft, andNintendo to produce MLB titles for their respective platforms, but bars third party developers such as EA Sports from continuing or developing their own MLB games. As a result, the "MVP Baseball" series now featurescollege baseball , with "MVP 06 NCAA Baseball " having been released in late January 2006, and "" in February 2007.Pitch meter
Upon its release in 2003, one of the game's most inventive aspects was its pitch/throw meter. Until then, most baseball games' pitching schemes required players simply to press the button corresponding to the pitch they wanted to throw, and hold the button down for a certain length of time to determine how hard the pitch was thrown. In "MVP Baseball", the player first holds down the pitch button (or throw button) to judge the power; once the desired power level is attained, the player must release the button and attempt to tap the same button within a target area. The closer the player gets to the target area, the more accurate the pitch or throw will be. While innovative within the field of baseball games, EA in fact adapted this feature from
golf games, which often feature a moving meter to determine the power and accuracy of shots (ironically, golf games largely abandoned shot meters around the time that "MVP Baseball" introduced it).trike zone
As well as the meter, the way of hitting changed slightly to aid hitters. A strike zone, divided into 9 rectangles, had each rectangle showing a certain color. Red, white, and blue. The colors represented how well each hitter hit a pitch thrown in that specific area. Red represented they hit it very well (hot), white represented they hit it average (normal), and blue represented they hit it very badly (cold).
oundtracks
Like all recent EA Sports games, the soundtrack to each "MVP Baseball" title contains licensed songs, called
EA Trax . The "MVP Baseball" series typically featuredalternative rock , ranging from mainstream artists likeSum 41 to indie acts likestellastarr* . The games featured several minor hits before they became popular such as "C'mon C'mon " byThe Von Bondies which is also used as the theme song for the TV show "Rescue Me".Backwards compatibility
With
Microsoft 's November 2007 update for theXbox 360 , the entire MVP series onXbox was made backwards compatible with the 360. [ [http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/backwardcompatibilitygameslist.htm Xbox.com | Xbox 360 - Original Xbox Games on Xbox 360 ] ] However,MVP Baseball 2005 has been taken off that list.MVP Baseball 2004 is playable, but contains glitches on uniform textures.
ee also
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MVP Baseball 2005
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*References
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