There’s been lots of activity over at the Out of the Park Baseball 2006 site over the past couple of days. I’m not one to buy into hype about any game, especially with a copy of Black & White sitting on my shelf. However, this may be the greatest baseball product release ever. That’s right, ever. More important than Front Page Baseball’s release, Diamond Mind Baseball, the original APBL for DOS, more important than them all. Let me caveat this enthusiasim by saying that I fully expect it not to work when released. That’s pretty much a given. But I believe that it will be fixed, so I’m not too worried.
If you define baseball game “accuracy” by the exact duplication of previous statistical results, then you already have your product – Diamond Mind Baseball. For the rest of us who want to model prospective baseball environments, we have PureSim and Out of the Park Baseball. Yea, Baseball Mogul is still breathing but the family is gathered around and deciding whether or not to pull the plug at this point.
I started complaining and moaning about baseball games many years ago because I wanted a Championship Manager (now Football Manager) baseball game. One where the game felt alive, was as complex as real life baseball, and didn’t feel like you were playing an Excel spreadsheet or an Access database. PureSim and OOTP 6.5 are close, but not in the same ballpark as Football Manager or even Eastside Hockey at this point.
All of that will change with Out of the Park Baseball 2006. So brew some coffee, go visit the site, and start learning about what will be the greatest baseball game ever developed for the PC. Even if it doesn’t pan out to include everything promised, I will be forever happy that there’s a young German programmer, writing code in England, who understands what career-minded baseball fans around the world really want in their game.
