Sony’s MLB: The Show franchise offers an incredible facsimile of America’s Pastime, but with Opening Day upon us, I find myself instead gravitating towards my NES and Super NES shelves to replay old favorites like Jaleco’s Bases Loaded, Konami’s Base Wars, and Nintendo’s Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball.
Nintendo didn’t have to look very far to find a spokesman for the Super NES game… Griffey and the rest of the Mariners were actually already on the payroll. Even though he didn’t care for the sport, CEO Hiroshi Yamauchi purchased the baseball team in 1992 and owned it until his death in 2013.
But Yamauchi’s tenure at the head of the Mariners organization did more than help produce a handful of great Super NES and N64 games, it also upended one of Major League Baseball’s longstanding traditions.