{"id":1290,"date":"2012-10-10T11:19:25","date_gmt":"2012-10-10T11:19:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=1290"},"modified":"2012-10-10T11:19:25","modified_gmt":"2012-10-10T11:19:25","slug":"my-top-100-71-triple-play-98","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=1290","title":{"rendered":"My Top 100: #71 &#8211; Triple Play &#8217;98"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_1298\" style=\"width: 622px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/199117_50540_front.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1298\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1298\" title=\"199117_50540_front\" src=\"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/199117_50540_front.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"612\" height=\"600\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/199117_50540_front.jpg 612w, http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/199117_50540_front-300x294.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 612px) 100vw, 612px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1298\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">1997 &#8211; EA Sports (PC, PlayStation)<\/p><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>When it comes to stick-and-ball sports, my preferences don&#8217;t stray too far from hockey and baseball.\u00a0 It seems like everyone but me is into either football or basketball, but I can&#8217;t stand one or the other.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve played a few <em>Madden NFL <\/em>games, as well as Midway&#8217;s arcade b-baller <em>NBA Jam<\/em>, but my interest in them was always fleeting.<\/p>\n<p>With hockey and baseball, I always knew I&#8217;d get more long-term enjoyment out of career modes, and whatever special feature the games happened to have.\u00a0 I also knew the athletes a heck of a lot better, which certainly didn&#8217;t hurt.\u00a0 This was the case with <em>Triple Play &#8217;98 <\/em>for PS1.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/RCAMhnipRlE\" frameborder=\"0\" width=\"480\" height=\"360\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The summer of &#8217;98 was a pretty damn fun one for me.\u00a0 Mike and Brian from across the street were probably not going to live there much longer, so we lived it up.\u00a0 We played street hockey all day, rode Mike&#8217;s dirt bike around his yard\u00a0(the <em>Baby Lisa<\/em>, we called it), and hung out in the fifth wheel camper that was parked in their driveway.\u00a0 There was a small TV hooked up in there with the help of extension cords, with a PS1 and Super NES hooked up to it for good measure.\u00a0 There was a set of &#8220;bunny ears&#8221; on it as well, but it didn&#8217;t really pick up anything interesting beyond the end of the Stanley Cup Finals on CBC&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Anyway,\u00a0of the\u00a0two games we played the most\u00a0all summer, <em>Triple Play &#8217;98 <\/em>was the all around more popular one among us friends.<\/p>\n<p>My interest in baseball was at its peak, what with the Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa home run record chase being in full swing.\u00a0\u00a0It was the first fully 3D baseball game that I had ever played, and even though it looks somewhat blocky looking at it today, I thought it was fantastic.\u00a0\u00a0On top of that, Jim Hughson and Buck Martinez, longtime announcers for Jays&#8217; games on TSN,\u00a0did the in-game\u00a0play-by-play.\u00a0 Every stadium I knew so well was carefully re-created in magnificent 32-bit glory, and each of them had\u00a0their own\u00a0CG-animated intro before games.\u00a0 The controls for pitching were simple, the batting scheme didn&#8217;t re-invent the wheel and kept it simple, while controls in the outfield were pretty easy to handle as well.<\/p>\n<p>It seemed like this game just begged for me to love it&#8230;\u00a0 and I did.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1300\" style=\"width: 460px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/base-2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1300\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1300\" title=\"base (2)\" src=\"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/base-2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" height=\"599\" srcset=\"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/base-2.jpg 450w, http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/base-2-225x300.jpg 225w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1300\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Triple Play is much less common than the Double Play, seen in progress here. Giggity.<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; When it comes to stick-and-ball sports, my preferences don&#8217;t stray too far from hockey and baseball.\u00a0 It seems like everyone but me is into either football or basketball, but I can&#8217;t stand one or the other.\u00a0 I&#8217;ve&#8230; <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/?p=1290\">Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,21,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-baseball","category-playstation","category-top-100"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1290"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1325,"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1290\/revisions\/1325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.controlpadblues.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}