Frank Thomas Big Hurt Baseball
| Frank Thomas Big Hurt Baseball | |
|---|---|
Cover art
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| Developer(s) |
Iguana Entertainment Iguana Entertainment UK Realtime Associates |
| Publisher(s) | Acclaim |
| Designer(s) | Brett Gow |
| Composer(s) | Greg Turner Eric Swanson Darren Mitchell (SNES) |
| Platform(s) | Sega Genesis, Super NES, Game Gear, Game Boy, Sega Saturn, PlayStation, DOS |
| Release |
Super NES:
Sega Genesis:
Game Boy:
PC:
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| Genre(s) | Traditional baseball simulation |
| Mode(s) |
Single-player Multiplayer |
Frank Thomas Big Hurt Baseball is a multiplatform baseball simulation game that was licensed by the Major League Baseball Players Association, featuring the likeness, motion captured movements, and "Big Hurt" branding of player Frank Thomas.
All the teams, statistics, and players are meant to simulate the 1995 Major League Baseball season. Acclaim released a successor to the game also featuring Thomas and now featuring actual major league teams, All-Star Baseball '97 Featuring Frank Thomas.
Featuring realistic pitching, realistic batting, and a realistic likeness of Frank Thomas himself for the game's era, there are also regular season and exhibition modes.
Pitching and batting can be done either in a high, medium, or low direction (in addition to slow, medium, or fast pitching) for greater realism. Greater emphasis was placed on defense and pitching, as opposed to more offense-oriented baseball video games like World Series Baseball '95. Games often take place at night; especially at Wrigley Field.
Games can be played to a minimum of two innings and a maximum of nine innings (plus any extra innings that occur in a tied game). All the teams in the game can be edited through a special edit screen; this allows players to replace teams that they don't like with their home towns (that don't have Major League Baseball teams).
More than 700 players with Major League Baseball contracts appeared in the game.
Frank Thomas's animations in the game were created from several days of motion capture filming Thomas at Acclaim's in-house studio during Spring 1995.
Reviewing the Genesis version, Videohead of GamePro said the game has "nothing awful", but is also short on exceptional features. He praised the animation but criticized the slow-moving fielders, inauthentic representations of real world ballparks, "jagged" voice tracks, and graphical glitches. Air Hendrix reviewed the Super NES version and was more negative: "Watching Little League players would be more exciting than struggling with Big Hurt's shoddy controls, scant features, and no-brainer action." He also criticized how tightly the camera follows the ball during fielding.Next Generation's brief review of the Super NES version stated, "Combing simulation aspects with a traditional baseball game, Frank Thomas' Big Hurt Baseball shows signs of innovative but flawed thinking. Most of the simulation aspects are in the pitching, which quickly becomes a tiresome chore. The rest of the game is a sub-par replica of several other baseball titles." They gave it two out of five stars.
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Wikipedia