MVP Baseball 2004 is the second entry in Electronic Arts' fledgling baseball franchise, which sprang from the old Triple Play games. Last year's game served as a respectable debut and went a long way toward getting EA's baseball game back on track. We look back on the series' roots and talk about what to expect from the latest game with producer Brent Nielsen.

MVP Baseball 2004 is the second entry in EA's baseball franchise.

GameSpot: MVP Baseball 2003 was a rebirth for EA's baseball series, which, up until then, had been the Triple Play games. Could you walk us through the best entries in the Triple Play series over the years and what the games did right? Which entries could have used some improvement?

Brent Nielsen: When the Triple Play series was born back in 1995 (wow) with the Sega Genesis version, the vision for the franchise was to create a fun, action-oriented baseball experience with a little more focus on the offensive side of the equation. Here is a rundown of the entire Triple Play franchise:

Triple Play 96 (Sega Genesis): A franchise is born!

Triple Play 97 (PS, PC): An innovative approach to hitting; easy to pick up and play; action-oriented baseball sim.

Triple Play 98 (PS, PC): One of the better in the TP series. Move to polygonal players, the first-ever two-man broadcast booth, and a much more well-rounded baseball experience.

Triple Play 99 (PS, PC): Franchise still gathering steam; introduction of action cameras enhances on-field experience; PS version suffered from frame rate fluctuations.

Triple Play 2000 (PS, PC, N64): My vote for best version in the TP series. Innovative new gameplay cameras and great gameplay that balanced nicely between a sim and a fun-playing arcade experience.

Triple Play 2001 (PS, PC): More feature-driven than gameplay-driven. Addition of the rewards and unlockables and legendary players made it a deeper, long-term playing experience. Engine starting to show its age.

Triple Play Baseball (PS2, PS, PC): First time on PlayStation 2. Moved to cursor batting system. Definitely coming out on the more arcade side of the baseball category fence.

Triple Play 2002 (PS2, Xbox): Finally, the engine has been taken as far as it can.

For the last couple of years in the Triple Play series, we had really wanted to move to a much more realistic and authentic baseball experience. There seemed to be a division in the baseball category between a simulation and arcade game. I thought there was no reason we couldn't build a baseball game that was both authentic and deep and still fun and accessible at the same time. It became very apparent, especially during the last year of Triple Play (2002), that we were not going to be able to make the game we really wanted to using the same engine. It was at that time we decided that in order to create the ultimate baseball game, we were going to have to completely start over from scratch and build a new engine from the ground up. That is how MVP Baseball came to be born.

The MVP Baseball series evolved from the lessons learned developing the Triple Play series.

GS: How do you feel last year's MVP game reflected all that knowledge? What worked? What do you wish had been done better?

BN: MVP Baseball was really a game that was three or four years in the making. It was years of self-analysis and an analysis of the baseball category as a whole. It became apparent that baseball fans and baseball gaming fans really wanted a realistic, authentic-playing baseball experience. We realized that the old vision of Triple Play being a more offense-driven, action-oriented baseball game was not what consumers wanted. We also recognized that the category was really suffering from a lack of innovation. There had really been no big innovation since World Series Baseball on the Genesis dropped the camera right behind the batter and made him the prominent character in the batter/pitcher view. So, we wanted to focus on creating an authentic baseball game that had some true innovation in the category.

What worked? Well, for starters I'd say that our new pitching interface was a huge win amongst the press and consumers alike. Every other baseball game to date really only let you play as the catcher--that is, here's the pitch I want you to throw, and here's where I want you to throw it. That is only half the battle. Pitching is all about execution, and with our new pitching interface, we gave users an unprecedented level of depth and control over pitching, where you actually got to play as the pitcher and execute your pitches. The new picture-in-picture baserunning was another breakthrough feature. It made the traditionally complicated task of baserunning much easier, and for the first time it actually put the offensive player on the field of play once the ball had been put into play rather than simply watching radar with dots. And finally, the addition of the franchise mode was another big win for us. Individual team goals gave users a reason to play each of the 30 teams. Game impact, manager ratings, and the momentum meter all provided a fresh take on long-term play. And again, we really innovated in this mode with the addition of intervention, where at any point in time during a simulated game you could interrupt the sim and drop yourself right into gameplay to actually finish playing out the game yourself and have a direct influence over the outcome.

The graphics in the game benefit from a robust engine

What do we wish we had done better? Three things really jump out at me. First, there were a few gameplay bugs that, although rather rare, happened just enough that brought the overall gameplay experience down a few points. These included tags not working 100 percent of the time when they should. There was one where if your fielder wasn't standing in exactly the right spot on a fly, the ball would bounce just beside him and he would dive back for the ball, and another where runners on second sometimes wouldn't advance when they could have on balls hit to the right side of the infield. The second issue was the automated jumping, sliding, and diving in the field. We heard that from reviewers and consumers loud and clear. And finally, I wish we could have gotten more overall depth in terms of features and modes into the game. This was, of course, a result of rewriting the game from scratch. There was only so much we could do in a year, and we needed to focus on the core game experience.