My Top 100: #71 – Triple Play ’98

 

When it comes to stick-and-ball sports, my preferences don’t stray too far from hockey and baseball.  It seems like everyone but me is into either football or basketball, but I can’t stand one or the other.  I’ve played a few Madden NFL games, as well as Midway’s arcade b-baller NBA Jam, but my interest in them was always fleeting.

With hockey and baseball, I always knew I’d get more long-term enjoyment out of career modes, and whatever special feature the games happened to have.  I also knew the athletes a heck of a lot better, which certainly didn’t hurt.  This was the case with Triple Play ’98 for PS1.

 

 

The summer of ’98 was a pretty damn fun one for me.  Mike and Brian from across the street were probably not going to live there much longer, so we lived it up.  We played street hockey all day, rode Mike’s dirt bike around his yard (the Baby Lisa, we called it), and hung out in the fifth wheel camper that was parked in their driveway.  There was a small TV hooked up in there with the help of extension cords, with a PS1 and Super NES hooked up to it for good measure.  There was a set of “bunny ears” on it as well, but it didn’t really pick up anything interesting beyond the end of the Stanley Cup Finals on CBC…

Anyway, of the two games we played the most all summer, Triple Play ’98 was the all around more popular one among us friends.

My interest in baseball was at its peak, what with the Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa home run record chase being in full swing.  It was the first fully 3D baseball game that I had ever played, and even though it looks somewhat blocky looking at it today, I thought it was fantastic.  On top of that, Jim Hughson and Buck Martinez, longtime announcers for Jays’ games on TSN, did the in-game play-by-play.  Every stadium I knew so well was carefully re-created in magnificent 32-bit glory, and each of them had their own CG-animated intro before games.  The controls for pitching were simple, the batting scheme didn’t re-invent the wheel and kept it simple, while controls in the outfield were pretty easy to handle as well.

It seemed like this game just begged for me to love it…  and I did.