TITLE
Solving the mystery within Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball
AUTHOR
Marc Carig
PUBLICATION
The Athletic
YEAR
2020
ARTICLE TYPE
Article
FROM THE ARTICLE
The man on the phone had all the answers and I couldn’t believe it. After all these years, could it really be this easy?I was a freshman in high school when I first played Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball. Real ballparks, real teams, real logos, funky MIDI tracks, big bright colors, cartoonish renderings of muscle-bound players that in retrospect look like a subversive wink to the steroids era — the Super Nintendo classic was a marvel that now doubles as a digital time capsule. It has maintained a loyal following, particularly among those who prefer their mid-’90s nostalgia in 16-bit increments. Its most distinctive charm was embedded in one of its few flaws.
The only real name in the game was Griffey’s. The other 699 were fakes, albeit attached to players with actual stats, jersey numbers and characteristics. Without a license from the players’ union, the designers turned to pseudonyms so whimsical that they remain etched into my memory to this day. Some sounded familiar: L. Tolstoy, M. Brando, B. Abbott and L. Costello. Others smelled of phone book randomness or computer-generated babble: Q. Trombone, B. Bambam, P. Ugly and B. Ullrich.
[…]
“It’s an interesting question,” the voice on the phone said a day later. “I get that one a lot, actually.”
With that, I spent the next 45 minutes gathering the puzzle pieces that had eluded me for 26 years.
COMPANIES MENTIONED
Software Creations
GAMES MENTIONED
Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball
PEOPLE MENTIONED
Brian Ullrich