When it comes to sports video games, the Sony PlayStation has always been regarded as the leader of the next generation consoles in that area, with the only exception being the sport of baseball, where Sega Sports and their World Series Baseball games have been considered the cream of the crop. Sega Sports is back again this year with their third baseball game for the Sega Saturn, World Series Baseball '98. And unlike the first two World Series Baseball games for the Saturn, World Series Baseball '98 features an all-new 3D polygonal engine, plus new batting and pitching interfaces, and more simulation like features.

Like all baseball video games should be required to have, World Series Baseball '98 comes packed with the Major League Baseball and Major League Baseball Players Association licenses, which means that it has all the real Major League Baseball teams and players. This also includes the two future expansion teams, the Arizona Diamond Backs and the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Of course, since those two teams don't have players yet, they are filled with fictional players. In addition to the real teams and players, World Series Baseball '98 is also packed with all 30 real Major League Baseball stadiums. That is the stadiums of the 28 current Major League Baseball teams, plus the stadiums for the expansion teams, Arizona and Tampa Bay. The stadiums are modeled after the real stadiums and have most of the major features like Boston's green monster in left field, the apple in Shea Stadium and the warehouse behind the right field fence in Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

There are four different play modes to choose from in World Series Baseball '98, all of which seem pretty standard in all of today's baseball video games. The play modes are: Exhibition, Pennant Race, Playoffs and Home Run Derby. The exhibition is like a quick play mode where you can either play against the computer, against a human opponent, or have the computer play against the computer. The Pennant Race mode is the season mode where you must choose a single team that you want to use and you then play that team's 162 game season based on this year's real schedule, which includes inter-league play. The Playoff mode is a mode that puts you straight into the playoffs, as if you have already finished the entire regular season. And finally, the Home Run Derby mode allows one or two players to battle to see who can hit the most home runs. In the Home Run Derby, you can choose any player from the entire list of Major League Baseball players and have them hit in any of the 30 ball parks.

In all the modes, you have three difficulty levels to chose from, which are rookie, veteran and all- star. In the exhibition mode, you can also select to have the DH rule turned off or on, while in the Pennant Race and Playoff modes, this option is determined by the team that you are using. In all the modes, you have the option of using either of the two future expansion teams, but in the season mode (Pennant Race) if you decide to use an expansion team, you must remove one of the current teams from the league.

One of the options that was seriously lacking in the World Series Baseball and World Series Baseball II was the statistical tracking. Sega Sports has finally heard the cry of many Saturn baseball fans and have done a pretty good and thorough job with the statistical tracking in World Series Baseball '98. League leaders for both pitching and hitting are kept, as well as the individual stats for all the players in your league. For pitchers, stats are kept for ERA, games, innings pitched, earned runs, wins, losses, saves, hits given up, home runs surrendered, strike outs and walks. And for the hitters, stats are kept for their batting average, at bats, hits, doubles, triples, home runs, runs batted in, strike outs, walks, stolen bases and errors. While this is a huge and welcome improvement over the previous two Saturn World Series Baseball games, it still isn't enough as they have failed to include statistics, league leaders or even the standings for players and teams in the league that your team is not a part of. This might not be considered a problem for many gamers, but for the diehard baseball fan, who wants to know how teams and players in the other league are doing, this is a huge thing to leave out, especially considering that you play teams in the other league in the regular season.

Besides the horrid stat tracking features in the previous two World Series Baseball games for the Saturn, the other features that were sorely missed were the lack of the option to create players and the total lack of player management in terms of trading, signing and releasing players. Sega has once again decided to ignore these important features. You can bring players up from the minors, but it is from a list of players that were on the team when the rosters were expanded or some made up players that don't exist. The lack of the create a player option is sorely missed as you aren't able to create players on your current team that have just been brought up from the minors and are new to your team.

While leaving out the create player option is somewhat forgivable, the omission of an option to trade, sign or release players is totally unforgivable. Casual baseball fans might not see the big deal with this option, but for baseball freaks like myself this is a must in any baseball game or any sports game for that matter. Trading players really helps the replay value of the game in that you can have and play with a roster of players that reflect the current roster on the real Major League team. For instance, when playing World Series Baseball '98, I'm stuck with the likes of Eric Davis, Rocky Coppinger and Jerome Walton, while I should be able to trade for or create players currently on the Baltimore Orioles roster like Geronimo Berroa, Harold Baines or Rick Krivda. I understand that Sega is probably scared of doing this because it might hurt future sales, but that just isn't true as the die hard fans that want these kind of options are also the people that will go out and buy the best baseball video game available each year, and if Sega keeps leaving out these options, World Series Baseball might not be the game that they decide to purchase.

Even though the options and features are a large part of what makes a great baseball video game, the most important thing to consider is the actual gameplay, and thankfully World Series Baseball '98 excels in this department. First of all, the hitting interface is one of the best that I've seen in any console baseball game. When you first come up, you have the option to look for a pitch in one of four areas of the strike zone; top left, top right, bottom left and bottom right. If you decide to look for a pitch in a certain area and the pitch is thrown in that area, the cursor will light up and your chances of getting a good hit are greatly increased. But, if the pitcher throws the ball in another area, you will have to move your cursor from the area, that you chose to look for the pitch in, to the area where the pitch is thrown, making it a bit tougher to get a hit. You also have the option to not look for a pitch in any area, in that case, the cursor will start in the middle and you can move from the start to where the pitch is thrown. Another neat little aspect of hitting is the hot and cold areas of the plate. Depending on who's at bat, the four areas of the strike zone will be either red, blue or clear. If it is red it is his hot zone, if it is blue it is his cold area, and if it is clear he is neither hot or cold in that area.

When the ball is pitched to you, there will be a cursor that lights up showing you where the pitcher has aimed the pitch. Of course, the ball won't always go directly to that spot as it depends on whether the pitcher hits his location or the type of pitch that is thrown. For instance, if the pitcher throws a split finger fastball, the ball and cursor will dip downwards as the ball approaches the plate. And where the ball ends up from where the cursor is aimed is totally reliant on the pitch thrown, which makes it a bit tougher to guess when facing pitchers with a larger arsenal of pitches at their disposal, just like in real baseball. And while fastballs usually end up exactly where the cursor is positions, the pitcher will occasionally get wild and miss the spot entirely.

Your final option in the batters box is to bunt. If you decide to bunt, you just simply press the Z button and use the D-pad to guide your bat and try to aim the bunt. Unlike most other baseball games, bunting doesn't seem to be such a huge offensive weapon in World Series Baseball '98, as the computer controlled players seem to know exactly where the ball should be thrown. In most cases, the defense will simply go for the sure out at first base, which is a huge improvement over most other baseball video games where they have the fielder go for the lead out, even when they don't have a chance to get them. This is a problem that plagued most of the previous baseball video games, where if you had runners on first and second, you could simply get on base, by sending the runners and bunting the ball because the computer controlled infielder would almost always throw the ball to third base in an effort to get the lead runner, even if he has no shot to get him. This doesn't happen in World Series Baseball '98 as the infielder will just throw the ball to first, unless he has a great shot at getting the lead runner.

This leads up to one of the most impressive aspects of World Series Baseball '98, the AI of the CPU controlled defense. Of all the current baseball games on the Sega Saturn, World Series Baseball '98 has the best computer AI. I've played through about one quarter of an entire season, about 39 games, and not once have I noticed the computer throw the ball to the wrong base. And by not throwing the ball to the wrong base, I mean the computer has thrown to the bases that a real Major League Baseball player would throw to in a real game. For example, when there are less than two outs, you have a player on second base, and you hit a slow grounder to the second baseman, the computer will simply throw the ball to first base and get the sure out. At the same time, if the ball is hit to shortstop, the computer will make a decision based on what you do with the man on second. If you have him run and the computer has time to get him out, he'll throw the ball to third, but if you had the player on second moving with the pitch and the chances of the shortstop getting him out are slim, the computer will have the shortstop get the force out at first base. I have never played a console baseball game where the computer AI has given me the impression that the players are actually thinking of what they are doing. This is even more noticeable when compared to the recently released Triple Play '98 for the Sony PlayStation, a game that probably has the worst AI of any game that I've ever played, as you'll notice bad decisions by the computer controlled players about two or three times per game. And as I stated earlier, I haven't noticed a really bad decision made by the computer controlled players in any of the 39 games that I have played.

Although I feel the computer AI is pretty close to perfect, it does have one minor complaint. This complaint is when there is a pop up in the middle infield, where the computer will have the pitcher catch the ball about 99% of the time. While this may seem right because the pitcher is the closest player to the ball, it isn't the case as Major League pitchers are taught to let the "real" defensive players catch the pop ups. Of course, some pitchers in the majors do catch their own pop ups on occasion, so this is really a nit pick and not a major problem.

The last positive aspect of the hitting that I will cover is the realism in the types of hits that your players gets. If you play on hard, you will still get more home runs that a real baseball team would get, but it is substantially less than the previous two Saturn World Series Baseball titles. Also, you pretty much get all the his that are in real baseball and are sometimes missing from video games, like ground balls up the middle, high choppers that go over the infielder's head, ground ball hits down the first or third base lines, and bloopers that fall in between the outfielders and infielders. In addition to that, for the most part hits that should be singles end up singles and hits that should be doubles end up doubles and so on. Although, certain hits down the lines that should be doubles with the faster players on your team are fielded too quickly and you get stuck with a single.

When it comes to base running, you have complete control over all your players. You can run them all at the same time, or control each individually. The only real problem with the base running aspect of World Series Baseball '98 is the fact that it is incredibly hard to score a runner from second on any type of single. Even if you have the man on second running, you will get yourself thrown out a high percentage of the time if you send him home on base hits that should score him rather easily. But, with tag ups on fly ball outs to the outfield, the runner seems to be able to score from balls hit to distances that should score him and he gets thrown out at the shorter distances that shouldn't score him from third.

Next up is the pitching and fielding aspects of the game. When you the batter comes up to the plate, you must first decide which pitch you are going to throw. You will have a variety of pitches depending on what that pitcher has in real life, or pretty close to it. For instance, some pitchers will just have a fastball and change up, while others will have four or five different pitches to choose from. Once you select a pitch, you must then select the location of where you want to aim the pitch, keeping in mind that certain pitches will move away from that spot. You must also consider the batter's hot and cold areas and try to keep away from his hot area, but still throw it there enough to keep him honest.

The control of the defensive players is pretty solid like all of the other aspects of the game. When the fielder catches the ball you have two ways of throwing the ball to specific bases, you can either used the D-Pad in conjunction with the C button, or use single button press that are assigned to each base (X for third, Y for second, Z for first, and A for home). Both ways work very well, and it's really a nice option to be able to choose either method.

The one major negative with the defense in World Series Baseball '98 is the lack of simulation features in positioning your defense and warming up your pitchers. You do have the option to have your infield set up for a bunt, play deep, play shallow, or normal, but that is nowhere near enough. You should be able to move your outfield varying degrees left/right and in/out. Plus, you should have more options for your infield as well, also in varying degrees. The lack of having to warm up your pictures takes some of the thinking and thus the realism out of the game. I want to have to make decisions on when to start warming up my pitchers, and be helped our hurt based on whether I made the correct decision, this is a large part of real baseball, but is left out of this game.

While the gameplay is probably the best feature of World Series Baseball '98, the graphics are probably its worst feature. The polygon players are animated fairly well, the batters have many of the real player's actual baseball stances, the pitchers have many of the real wind-ups, and the stadiums are pretty accurate to the details of the real stadiums, but that is pretty much all of the positives. The players are nowhere near as smooth as the players in either Triple Play '98 or MLB '98 for the PS and neither are the stadiums. The players are animated fairly well, but the swings aren't as fluid as the other recently released polygon baseball games, and those aren't exceptionally fluid either. And the stadiums, while detailed, are pretty low-res and have flat and inactive crowds There are also some polygon glitches in the batter's swings and in the stadium walls on deep fly balls to the outfielders.

The sound in World Series Baseball '98 is pretty much like the previous two games. You have your standard crowd noises, no vendors yelling out, the announcer calls balls, strikes, strike outs and different types of hits and you have music for the national anthem and seventh inning stretch. The announcer if pretty average, as he calls everything pretty quick and his voice is crystal clear, but it doesn't seem like he has that wide of a variety in what he says. He tends to say things like low and outside on strikes and will say the ball was crushed on weak pop outs to the infielders. Also, on high pop ups to the infield, he will say, something to the effect of "he hits the ball high in the air", something that I've never heard an announcer say. A simple, "he pops it up" would have been much better. The sound effects are pretty good, as in many cases you can tell how hard of hit the player just got based on how it sounds off of the bat. Balls hit on the inside of the bat sound like they are hitting the inside of the bat and balls hit cleanly sound pretty solid off of the bat.

Overall, World Series Baseball '98 is probably the best baseball game available for the Sega Saturn, and one of the top baseball games for any video game console. If it were not for the omission of certain very important simulation type features like player management, complete control over your defensive positioning and having to deal with the process of warming up pitchers in your bullpen, World Series Baseball '98 could have been a must buy game. But as it stands, it is still a very good game and one that should be considered by anyone looking for a quality baseball game for their Sega Saturn.

Reviews on Vizzed must be exclusive to Vizzed so I'll have to close this:

Original review:
http://www.sega-saturn.com/saturn/software/reviews/wsb98.htm