MVP 06 NCAA Baseball

Written by Adam Woolcott  on December 01, 2005

First Impressions: Ping!

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When 2K Sports brokered an exclusive contract with Major League Baseball, making themselves the only licensed 3rd party publisher (meaning Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo can make as many MLB games as they see fit), it left EA Sports out in the cold similar to how EA Sports put a monopoly on the NFL license. As you might expect from the gaming giant, EA hasn't taken this lying down, and in turn has made quite a resourceful, if not risky move Ц making a college baseball game. Sure, EA has done very well with the NCAA Football and NCAA March Madness franchises, but college baseball is a far more niche sport, albeit one with a rabid following. Christened MVP 06 NCAA Baseball, this mouthful of a title does two things Ц keep the MVP name out there, and make sure casual fans know this is not a MLB game. In typical EA fashion, this PS2 and Xbox release comes with all the trimmings and not only will it be the first college baseball game ever made, but a game that rivals the pro game in depth.

MVP 06 features roughly half the Division 1 teams Ц over 120 from 14 major conferences, such as the Big 10, Pac 10, ACC, and SEC, with over 20 true-to-life college ballparks, from major programs like Texas, Miami, LSU, Arizona State, and Stanford (the other teams apparently will use a generic stadium) and so on. Naturally, EA Canada has placed in both a create-a-team and create-a-player option, both of which you can likely place into the Dynasty mode. You can also create your own ballpark for a created team, just like the NCAA Football franchise. The Dynasty mode is known as The Road to Omaha, as you'll drive through a regular season en route to the College World Series which takes place in the Nebraska city. You'll be able to recruit, customize schedules, and whatnot, for numerous seasons. In addition, the game will feature full online play (as if you didn't expect that), which should be a hit in dorm rooms and amongst bored kids who can't find anything to do in Omaha during the Series.

For the most part the game will resemble MVP 05 technically, but it will have numerous changes to reflect the differences been pro and college baseball. For many, the most important thing is there's no wood bats here, replaced by the familiar ping of aluminum sticks. Also, certain rules that are exclusive to college play, like a different DH rule, a larger strike zone, how beanballs are handled, a 10 run 'slaughter' rule, amongst others. Fans of NCAA hardball will know most of these things, and EA is making sure that MVP 06 captures the essence of the game, but they also know it must keep true to the style of baseball fans of the genre expect. Apparently there will be new pitching and hitting systems, but EA hasn't spit those details out quite yet. Hopefully these changes are minor and cosmetic Ц MVP's pitching and hitting is what helped it stand out and ultimately revived EA's dead baseball fortunes after the debacle that was Triple Play, and altering it too much could be disastrous. Obviously it needs to be tailored to the college experience, but hopefully it retains all that made MVP great when it was a pro baseball game.