Product information

Computer Platform

Sega Dreamcast

ASIN

B000059Z7F

Release date

August 15, 2001

Customer Reviews

3.5 78 ratings

3.5 out of 5 stars

Best Sellers Rank

#118,830 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
#125 in Sega Dreamcast Games

Product Dimensions

5.6 x 4.9 x 0.4 inches; 1.6 ounces

Type of item

Video Game

Rated

Everyone

Is Discontinued By Manufacturer

No

Item Weight

1.6 ounces

Manufacturer

"Sega of America, Inc."

Date First Available

February 2, 2001

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Product Warranty: For warranty information about this product, please click here

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Product Description

Product description

TURN UP THE HEAT
Stare down the competition in six different styles of long ball action, including Network mode with Online match-up. You've never played a baseball game with more realism, control, or depth. From the first pitch of Spring Training to the final out of the World Series, Sega Sports brings the heat.
- MODES - Exhibition, Season, Playoffs, Home Run Derby, Franchise, and Online game modes.
- REALISM - Accurate batting stances and pitching wind-ups, player ability based on extensive ratings, player-specific accessories.
- CONTROL - Total fielding and lineup control. Create, sign, and trade free agents; manage your pitching rotation and bullpen; set lineups and batting order; and total control of every player on the diamond.
- DEPTH - Hot and cold zones for batters, player injuries, multiple fantasy drafts for season and franchise modes, fully licensed with every team and stadium.

Amazon.com

World Series Baseball 2K1 nearly ruined one of the most cherished franchises in sports gaming with its poor gameplay. For the 2K2 edition, Sega turned to Visual Concepts--the developers behind its excellent football, baseball, and hockey titles. The developers only had 10 months to work on the title, and while it's the best baseball game on the Dreamcast to date, it plays like a game that needs more work.

Thankfully, fielding is back in the game (fielding was automatic in 2K1). Unfortunately, the controls can be very tricky. Ground balls hit within a reasonable range of the player often pass him. The only alternative is diving, which leads to spectacular shots of players diving over and past baseballs. The batting and pitching controls are simpler than in last year's version, but could have used more polishing. Hitting is way too arduous (in the video game sense)--even after dozens of game hours, tracking pitches is far more difficult than in other games. Positives include sharp graphics and a plenitude of modes, such as exhibition, season, playoffs, home run derby, franchise, and online. This is currently the only baseball game on a console that supports Internet play, albeit with some lag and bug issues.

Problems aside, this is as good as baseball gets on this platform. If the Dreamcast is your only system and you're itching for a baseball game, then don't hesitate to pick this one up. Gamers with other consoles should consider EA Sports's and Acclaim's baseball titles. --Raymond M. Padilla

Pros:

The best baseball game on the Dreamcast
Excellent graphics
Internet play Cons:
- Gameplay could have used a few more months of tweaking
- AI is easily fooled
- Internet play can be buggy

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Customer reviews

3.5 out of 5

78 global ratings

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Joshua Vonckx

It's was great.

Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2023

I love it.

Reviewed in the United States on August 16, 2001

I stayed away from WSB2k1 because of the universally poor reviews it received - no fielding, stupid batting interface, and basically no fun. I've been wanting a good baseball game for the DC ever since, and the last 3 weeks were torturous, what with all the delays. To my great astonishment and delight, I was able to snag a copy of WSB2K2 last night, and now I'm a much happier person. It's not a perfect game, but it's good enough...
Before I delve full-bore into this review, let me stress that I have not gone online with it, and I probably won't go online with it; I'm just not really interested in online gaming. So I don't know how well the online game works.
First, the bad news:
1. This is going to sound wierd, but the manual is horrendously incomplete. If you want to know how to pick off a guy at 1st, you'd better have some good eyesight, because it's barely mentioned. Franchise mode is totally unexplained, other than it exists - same with explanations of all the other modes, difficulty settings, etc.
2. The interface is clunky and non-intuitive. Last night my roommate and I played a quick exhibition game, and the score was something like 21-3. I wanted to see the box score when the game was over; it took me about 5 minutes to figure out how to get it.
3. The home-run derby is weak. Regardless of difficulty settings, you will always get an 85mph fastball right down the pipe. Also, the camera does a poor job of tracking your home runs - if I hit a 520-foot job, I wanna see it fly into the parking lot - I don't want the camera flying into the wall. Also, and most unforgiveable, I couldn't not figure out how to make it 2-player, besides just handing off the controller between batters.
4. The announcing is a wee bit out of sync with the action. At one point, I had just struck out a batter, and the announcer said, "A very nicely turned unassisted double play." But that isn't really that distracting. The announcer WILL make mistakes in Home Run Derby, though, and sometimes you can get pretty confused. I did a HRD at Enron field and hit a few short of the center field wall that the announcer called home runs, and I hit a few that were home runs, and were scored home runs, but the announcer said "He didn't get enough of that one."
5. If you have a season in progress, you can't play HRD unless you remove the VMU. I don't know why.
Now, the good, and boy is it ever:
Graphically, the game is really beautiful where it matters most - the player animations and the field itself. The stands are a little ugly, but I mean, come on, who cares what the stands look like when you're down 2 runs in the bottom of the 9th.
Fielding is hard, but doable. I've played the game for a total of 1 day, so my outfielders tend to over-run a lot (I've never seen so many bloop triples); I would expect that as I get more adept at the game, I'll learn to anticipate where to go. You do have the options of positioning your defense, which is great, although I haven't really used it yet. When you're playing the CPU, it pretty much always hits rockets past your infielders; by the same token, they tend to do that when you hang fat juicy pitches over the plate.
Pitching and batting are really easy to pick up, which is fortunate since the manual is so vague. In 2-player mode, against a human opponent in the same room, it's tough to hide your desired pitch location (unlike in NFL2k1, where it was really easy to disguise your formations and play selections). It would be nice to have pitch location on the VMU, instead.
I'm a bit of a stat-head, and there are lots of stats to monitor, although I've only played one game in my season and haven't really hunkered down and studied them.
Baseball has to be the hardest game to electronically recreate, as it has the most variables out of any sport. Anything can happen at any given moment, and a game can only be prepared for so much. This game is a very solid effort, one that I will enjoy as long as my DC continues to work; it does give me great hope for its future on other platforms. Some suggestions for 2k3 and onwards:
1. Wind and weather physics - how batted balls react to strong winds, hot/cold/rainy weather, etc.
2. "Smart" Commentary - noticing hitting streaks or other "odd" phenomena, having more vocal inflection when announcing a lopsided score, etc.
3. In franchise mode, have variable audience attendance. Yankees-Red Sox should be close to sold out, Devil Rays-Royals should be empty. And if you play the Rays for a season, and you start winning, the audiences should get bigger - thus generating more revenue with which to sign better players... that's very simplistic, of course, and I'd like to have it more realistic than that.
Of course, I'm not expecting all that. I wanted a baseball game that looked great and played better, and WSB2K2 comes through. It's certainly not perfect, and I'm sure that they could have tweaked a few more things if they had more time (although I would have been miserable), but what's there is good enough and certainly doesn't diminish a fun baseball experience.

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The Beaz

Should be Good

Reviewed in the United States on June 2, 2001

WSB2K1 WAS ONE OF MY FAVORITE GAMES. i WAS DISSAPOINTED WITH SOME THINGS: THE FIELDING WAS HORRIBLE. I DONT UNDERSTAND WHY SEGA WOULD THINK AUTO FIELDING WOULD BE GOOD. WHEN A FRIEND AND I WERE PLYING IT WAS 0-0 IN THE 9TH HE HAD A NO-HITTER GOING AND I HAD A GUY ON 3RD(he was walked). I HIT A GROUNDER RIGHT AT THE SHORTSTOP AND HE TURNED AROUND AND THE BALL WENT RIGHT THROUGH HIM. I WON ON THAT HIT! THATS NOT MY IDEA OF A GOOD GAME. THE STATS WEREN'T TOO GOOD. THE STADIUMS WERE VERY NICE EXCEPT WHEN I HIT HOMERS IT WOOULD GO OVER AND IT WOULD GO RIGHT THRU AN OBJECT OR THE GROUND. WHEN I HIT ONE AT PAC BELL IN SF. IT JUST HIT THE WATER LIKE IT WAS GROUND AND JUST STOPPED. I HIT A GRAND SLAM THAT HIT THE FOUL POLE AND IN WAS CALLED A FOUL BALL. THEN THE OTHER TEAM HIT ONE AT A DIFFERENT STADIUM OFF THE POLE AND IT WAS FAIR. PLUS, YOU NEED A FRANCHISE MODE AND A CREATE-TEAM OPTION. WHEN YOU THROW FROM THE OUTFIELD ITS A LOLLIPOP THROW EVEN IF YOU THROW WITH GUERRERO WHO HAS THE BEST ARM IN THE LEAGUE. I LOVED THE GRAPHICS THOUGH. THE ONLY THING I LIKED ABOUT THE AUTO FIELDING WAS THAT THEY MADE SOME AWSEOME PLAYS. AND THE THROWS WERE QUICK AND COOL. IS THERE EVER AN ERROR? I JUST WISH I COULD BUNT FOR A HIT. I THINK THERE SHOULD BE A MODE WHERE IN A FRANCHISE YOU GET MONEY OR POINTS FOR CERTAIN ACHIEVEMENTS LIKE WINNING THE CHAMPIONSHIP OR HAVING THE MVP ON YOUR TEAM OR 100 WINS. THEN YOU CAN BUILD ON TO YOUR STADIUM BY BUYING PARTS OR MAKING A STADIUM WITH ENOUGH POINTS AND PICK WHERE IT IS LIKE BY WATER OR IN THE DESERT. THEN PICK DISTANCE OF WALLS AND HEIGHT OF THEM. THAT WOULD BE A DREAM THOUGH. I WISH THERE WERE MORE AWARDS, GOLD GLOVES, ROOKIE OF THE YEAR, CY YOUNG,MVP,ALLSTAR MVP, ETC. AND ONE MORE THING, I THINK YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO HAVE 2 PLAYERS ON THE SAME TEAM INSTEAD OF 1 ON 1 OR 1 VS CPU. THAT WOULD MAKE IT GREAT. THANKS FOR YOUR TIME.

3 people found this helpful

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Jeremy Shawn Pyles

WORLD SERIES BASEBELL 2K LINE STRIKES OUT AGAIN

Reviewed in the United States on October 4, 2001

I was so excited when heard that Sega was making another baseball game for the Dreamcast. I just knew that there was no way that WSB2K2 would be as bad as the previous edition. Boy was I wrong.
First of all, what's up with the fielding? I mean it seems that every ball hit is a frozen rope, and impossible to field. Once in while, I was able to get to the balls that weren't hit too hard, but usually everything just shot right by my fielder. Also, when you go after a ball that you think you have a chance of getting, the computer will automatically switch to the outfielder, so you just barely miss making a play. As far as the outfield, the only thing they were good for was making catches. There is no possible way to throw a computer runner out, because it will not go beyond a sure base.
As for the hitting, I think it was way to easy to get a solid hit. And the homeruns, it seemed like whenever you hit one, it looks like you're hitting it out of a little league field.
The absolute worse thing about this game is the amount of bugs in it. I am not able to advance to additional games. My stats are saved, but I still keep playing the same game. Horrible, absolutely horrible!
The one bright side about the game is the pitching interface. It seemed realistic.
Overall, I hate this game. I wish that Visual Concepts had spent more time on fixing the bugs before releasing it. You know that they had plenty of people testing the game, but they felt it was more important to meet a release date, instead of producing a quality baseball game. If you are searching for the best baseball game available, check out High Heat 2002 for the PC. From what I've seen, it is the most realistic game to date. It doesn't have the best graphics, but the gameplay is awesome.
From this point on, I am boycotting all future WSB2K games, but of course I doubt there will be anymore.

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