Original Release: Konami, 2008, PlayStation 2 / Wii / Nintendo DS
MLB Power Pros received a quick follow-up that adds a pretty substantial amount of new features in addition to updating the rosters … not too bad for a year’s work.
MLB Power Pros 2008 (PS2 / Konami / 2008)
Where to Buy: Amazon
How to Emulate: PlayStation 2 Emulation Guide
Review by: C. M0use
Though the series has been going in Japan since the SNES days, MLB Power Pros was the West’s first official taste of Konami’s “Pawapuro” games. The original release was very quickly followed by this sequel in only about a year’s time. As you would expect from the quick turnaround time it is pretty much an identical game engine, but it does have a solid amount of little tweaks and additions plus some substantial new gameplay modes.
If you already had a strong opinion about the look or gameplay style of the previous game, this ain’t gonna change it. Pitching is still easy to get the hang of, batting is still brutal at first. It’s actually a pretty good system, but it’s VERY unforgiving in terms of timing and placement. Your first stop should definitely be batting practice, which is nicely customizable (as is much of the rest of the game).
One of the big new additions is a revamped “Success Mode” for character creation. This follows the general pattern of the one in the previous game, but takes you through the minor leagues instead of college. That puts more of the focus on actually improving your game and playing, but you can still date girls and do little side quests. However, as with the first game you kinda have to choose whether to actually create a good character to import or just do the dating/fun stuff and give up on actually making the majors. Success Mode is a nice and unique add-on – I can’t really think of any other full-fledged sports game that also works in a visual novel – but it still really is kind of annoying as the only means by which to create custom characters.
The other big new addition is a secondary Success Mode, this one called MLB Life. You either pick an existing MLB star or create your own (or pick up where your Success Mode guy left off if he made the majors), then start out in a team’s minor league system and eventually work your way up to a career in the big show. In between you can date, get married, have kids and hang out with buds on the team.
Unfortunately, aside from a mobile game this was it for the Power Pro games outside of Japan. Of the two full-sized versions we got I’d say this one is the way to go, but if you’re planning on playing with PCSX2 be aware there’s a pretty nasty bug in this version. It has a constant memory leak that will cause it to crash about 5 to 15 minutes into each gameplay session, the only fix I could find is to play it with an older version of the emulator (0.9.6 appears to be the most recent one that works).
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