- NA release: 25th May 1998
- PAL release: 1998 (Australia only)
- JP release: N/A
- Developer: Angel Studios
- Publisher: Nintendo
- N64 Magazine Score: 74%
With this being published by Nintendo, you would hope for a fun and solid portrayal of Baseball, similar to how NBA Courtside did the same for Basketball. Unfortunately, while this does go for a more arcade-style format, it’s rather clunky and messy by comparison.
This features a similar system than most of the other N64 baseball games, and this seems to be the easiest to hit the ball – but still almost impossible to actually do anything with it, struggling to land a hit that doesn’t go straight to an opponent, while the CPU hit a home run first try.
One thing I do like is that the games seem snappier and go by much quicker, so you can get through a match in a decent time, but this is just an average baseball game.
Fine
As an arcadey sort of baseball game it works very well. You don’t need to use every button on the control pad, and the swift pace of the game means that you don’t have to wait more than a minute or two to get a turn at batting.
Martin Kitts, N64 Magazine #18
Remake or remaster?
Newer baseball games are likely better – although it’s interesting that Nintendo once had the Major League Baseball license, as Sony have now had it for a while.
Official ways to get the game.
There is no official way to get Major League Baseball Featuring Ken Griffey Jr.
Australia
Japan
North America
N64 Games by Date
1997: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
1998: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
1999: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
2000: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec
One of the few times that Nintendo actually took advantage of their ownership over the Seattle Mariners (There were four Ken Griffey branded baseball games that Nintendo published across the SNES and N64… with one of them, Winning Run, actually even being developed by Rare!).
What’s also notable about this game is that it was the first game to be solo developed by Angel Studios (they had previously co-developed Mr Bones for the Saturn and the SEGA CD version of Ecco: The Tides of Time; but this was the first game they made alone as part of Nintendo’s “Dream Team”). Angel Studios would go on to make a few noteworthy games… nothing huge you know, just the Red Dead Revolver/Redemption series.