Hot Style Points For HR Shots And The Most Demanding Batter/Pitcher Interface In Baseball Sim History Make HRK The Bomb!
But Nintendo has always been the arcade console brand by definition. So they get a free pass in trying to attract their consumer base. Any marketing disillusionment is a moot point since instead of bowing to casual fans, serious sports sim studies respect a game's ability to play realistic. That HRK does with a novel yet demanding Batter/Pitcher interface that leaves even the most recent HD behemoths in the dust. Using a movable color coded, oval or angular sweet spot, HRK forces you to see and react just like in the big leagues. No one button pressing here. Hits must be earned.
Difficulty levels make almost any type of scoring contest possible. Default settings from Rookie to Legend insure high to low scoring games from blow outs to nail biters. But the most inventive feature can be found in the extra option settings which affect the amount of aid. Full aid means if you can time the power bar and pitch movement you'll be flirting with no hitters or pitching duals. What's more, junk ball pitches are more forgiving if you throw a mistake. On the other hand, empty aid means more slugfests in that off speed is harder to time and place and more liable to be punished.
What can lower this game to the level of campy pretender for some is the sad sound and commentary once you get past the crack of the bat. But that shortcoming is more than made up for by HRK's support of Progressive Scan TV, a fact curiously omitted or overlooked by net review consensus. Also glossed over is that HRK is actually an upgrade of Sega World Series Baseball 2K1 for the Dreamcast, another also-ran baseball release that was panned because the original interface was too demanding for quick fix button fans with little patience for fresh controls and short attention spans.
All in all, most review sites missed the mark by comparing this game to others and not spending enough time getting to accept and deal with its quirks. If they'd done so, they would've discovered that manipulation of the power bar affects batting, sweet spot mobility, pitch placement and speed, thus making game play more realistic than one button pressing. And lastly, home runs in this game are tough to hit, more visually impressive and an appreciated icing on the cake. Indeed, for purists HRK harkens back to the 1970s, when the national pastime and MLB video games weren't juiced.