Ludography
Triple Play 99 cover

1998 · Baseball · Sports

Triple Play 99

PlayStation console exclusive

This iteration of EA's baseball simulation adds 3D hardware support, a career mode, and a full-league draft. It features official Major League Baseball statistics and names of all teams and players from the 1998 season.

Released
28 February 1998
Platforms
PlayStationWindows
Genres
BaseballSports
Developers
—
Publishers
EA Sports
Country
Canada
Age ratings
ESRB E

About

Triple Play 99 (TP99) is a baseball video game published by EA Sports featuring Major League Baseball rosters current from January 15, 1998 and stats from the 1997 season. Seattle Mariners shortstop Alex Rodriguez is featured on the cover.

The game has all 30 Major League Baseball teams including the newly added Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Triple Play 99 adds 3D hardware support, a career mode, a manager mode and a league-wide draft.

Keywords

  • baseball
  • management

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

TP99 includes all of the real stadiums, including Bank One Ballpark and Tropicana Field, except for the Kingdome (Seattle Mariners), which no longer exists, and three secret stadiums.

Injuries are also included in TP99. Players can accidentally collide when trying to catch the ball and fall over. Players may unexpectedly have an injury while playing as well, and the game will require that the team bring in a substitute. Pitchers can also lose their stamina faster than normal, making things even tougher. The game does have a stamina meter, and also shows a count of how many pitches the pitcher has thrown, how many balls, strikes, hits, home runs allowed, and walks.

Reception

Triple Play 99 met with a wide range of opinions from critics. , and frame rate, making for a game which is overall enticing but not one of the top games in its genre. While critics agreed that the frame rate is below standard, they sharply varied on how much of a problem this was; GameSpot dismissed it as a minor graphical shortcoming, while GamePro said it is bad enough to interfere with the gameplay, though over time one can adjust to it, and all four reviewers in Electronic Gaming Monthly's review team instead said that it is a crippling flaw which turns an otherwise great video game into a middling experience. Kraig Kujawa, for example, commented that "This is like playing baseball in mud.

The erratic frame-rate and choppy player animations make it difficult to field and judge pitching speeds (among other things). The intro, deep stats, features and sound (particularly the two-man commentary) are great, but it doesn't change the fact that this game isn't very fun to play."

Releases by platformdates and regions as published

PlatformReleasedRegions
PlayStation28 March 1998Worldwide
Windows28 March 1998Worldwide

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Collections3 collections

Description adapted from its source, CC BY-SA 4.0.