Retro Review: MVP Baseball 2003

Game: MVP Baseball 2003
Platform: PC, Playstation 2, Xbox
Release Date: 2002
Metascore: 82
Techgraphs score: 4.1 or 82 B-

Let’s Play
You want two solid hours of annoying commentary and awful gamesmanship? Wait no longer! Watch below:

Game History
Come back with me, through this darkly curtain of time, to an age of innocence, an era of good feelings, a place before complicated swing mechanics — a time when the X button was swing, and that’s all it took. The year is 2002, Scott Hatteburg is in Oakland — all’s right in the world.

And as we approach this brave new 2003 season, Miguel Tejada and Barry Bonds are both coming off MVP seasons, the Anaheim Angels are reigning world champenes, and league offense is trending up up UP!

We, the people, needed a game. We needed a successor to Triple Play, and EA Sports said, “Thou shalt hath MVP Baseball.” From the heavens and delivered unto us mere plebeians was a rectangular prism, white in color and adorned with Miguel Tejeda, the Unbesmirchable, and Randy Johnson, the Man of Thousand Awful Hair Choices.

This was MVP Baseball 2003; this was our baseball. And it meant the world to us.

Ratings

Graphics: 4.5 stars
Strong points for the graphics, which at times did not look their age — like a Hollywood starlet well past her prime, MVP Baseball 2003 at times looks the visage of a much younger game, at other times, baseballs lined through players’ backs and into their gloves, faces disappeared entirely, and the starlet’s skin looked more plastic than flesh.

Concept & Game Modes: 4.0 stars
What was the state of the great and mighty Game Mode of 2003? I don’t recall. Perhaps having a mere 10-season franchise mode was enough for the base gamers of that era, but this is a post-hypermodernity, post-Marxist, post-Facebook world — I need infinite seasons and I need a game mode that’s all about me, all about the self. I want a player mode that allows me to start as a glimmer in my father’s eye until I’m a manager in God’s own Afterlife Baseball League.

Gameplay & Interface: 4.5 stars
Not enough Linkin Park during the menu screens.

Glitches: 3.5 stars

He who was in charge of catching fly balls said,
‘Why when I moved the joystick
to catch the ball did you not catch the ball?’
Caned me.

-Anonymous

Rosters: 4.0 stars
Um, hello, everybody knows Dan Johnson got drafted in 2001 and should have been available in the Oakland Athletics minor league system. This enormous oversight greatly damages the game’s respectability.

See Also:

98 A+ Out of the Park Baseball (OOTP) 2015 (PC)
98 A+ Out of the Park Baseball (OOTP) 2014 (PC)
97 A+ Out of the Park Baseball (OOTP) 2013 (PC)
96 A+ Baseball Mogul ’13 (PC)
96 A+ MLB ’12 The Show (PS3)
79 C+ MLB 2K12 (PS3, XBOX 360, Wii, PC, etc.)
74 C MLB Ballpark Empire (Facebook)