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I don't know about the rest of the world, but the ONLY game I was chomping at the bit for was Major League Baseball 2K8. I have been playing simulated baseball games since before electricity. Okay, that's a slight exaggeration, but I have graduated from fantasizing about being my Major League heroes by playing wiffle ball in the back yard and playing baseball card games and Strat o matic to Atari baseball to Intellivison to Earl Weaver PC baseball and finally to MVP Baseball 2005 from EA Sports on my Xbox. This last was like a dream come true. I spent days reorganizing the rosters to suit my now maturing fantasy of being the general manager of my team.

I created the players who were missing, created teams for both the Dynasty and Owner modes, set the prices for my vendors, began to build my ballpark, and set out on a course to make my team the most successful sports franchise in the history of athletics. It was a blast! And then, just like fans of the Dodgers and Giants when they left for the West Coast, my world came tumbling down.

When EA lost the rights to produce MLB games and came out with the NCAA version, I wanted to cry. I was only interested in Major League Baseball and EA was the company that did it right. I tried to look on the bright side. The new company would have a new take, I thought. Heck, it might even be better. Yeah. That's it. Then I saw MLB2K6. The disaster that was that game has been well documented. The biggest problem was that no one could read any of the writing. We could not read who was pitching. We could not read who was at bat. We could not read the score. And forget about going into the menus to try to warm up a reliever or choose a pinch hitter.

My brother-in-law got the 2007 version and it seemed to be a little better. At least they appeared to have recognized the problem with the unreadable lettering and fixed that. But I had read that the creators of the game were really focused on the 2008 version and that THAT was the version that would make us forget all others. I spent the next year enjoying my MVP 2005 game while desperately anticipating MLB2K8. And then it arrived

I got slugged in the gut not once, but twice. Again, my brother-in-law was the trailblazer and bought the game before I could get my own. That's when I found out. Not only were they not offering the game on Xbox (But they were offering it on Xbox 360 another great example of a company screwing its loyal customer: "Hey! Thanks for purchasing our game system and a whole library of games. By the way, we've come up with a new system and you will have to buy it to play any future games we come up with." Beautiful.), but once again, the words on every part of every screen were completely illegible.

This is especially disappointing because it seems like I would really enjoy the game itself. The rosters are updated, of course. I enjoy Jon Miller and Joe Morgan as announcer and analyst. They seem to have improved the farm system features. They have a lot of new pluses that may have even tempted me to go out and look for an inexpensive, second hand 360, but what is the point if I can't read any of it?

Oh well. There's nothing like an old, reliable friend. Tenth season of MVP 2005 let's play ball!

Learn more about this author, Michael J Link.
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