Ken Griffey, Jr.’s Winning Run Team Rare Retrospective

The beginnings of the project that was to evolve into Ken Griffey Jr’s Winning Run are rooted further back in Rare’s recent history than most people imagine. The initial version, actually intended as an Ultra 64 title, went into development on the same hardware that was being used for Killer Instinct at around the same time that the original DKC project kicked off, and might well have made it through as a first generation N64 title had events not conspired to postpone and ultimately scrap its production.

When Nintendo brought up the subject of baseball again during the creation of Diddy’s Kong Quest, it was decided that a SNES version might be a better idea after the worldwide success of DKC demonstrated that Rare had all but mastered the machine. And so began the version of Winning Run that you see on the shelves today, and which has sold almost half a million copies in America alone.

With the graphical potential of ACM at their fingertips, the development team decided to aim for maximum realism as opposed to the caricature style of the existing SNES Griffey title. The MLB licence gave free rein for the use of real leagues, real ballparks and real team names (but not real players, which in turn gave the team free rein to come up with eccentric characters of their own). This realism was compounded and enhanced by a variety of play modes including MLB League, All-Star and World Series, the authentic ballpark sound effects (right down to the wandering popcorn salesmen), and the unique stats carried by each of the 700+ fully motion-captured and 3D-rendered players, which are continually updated according to their performance.

Still, the realism aspect never compromised the amount of fun to be had and it remains essentially an arcade-style game, with extras such as the hidden teams and codes included as a further incentive for players to see their team through to success. The challenge of producing a baseball game that would stand out in a crowded market was made particularly tough by the fact that the all-British development team initially had only the most basic grasp of the sport, but extensive research and attention to detail finally resulted in a game widely held as the best of its kind for the SNES.