I love the idea of baseball games, probably because I love baseball in general. And this is the best baseball game I've played since I was a teenager with an old Macintosh Plus. Damned if I know what the baseball game was called that I played back then, but the rosters and skills were fully customizable, everything was black & white, the field was 2-D (viewed from the top) except when you had to field a pop fly ball (when the field was still 2-D, but viewed from the side). It was basically a one-click game.

Super Mega Baseball is not a one-click game. It's not black and white. The field is fully rendered in three dimensions. It's a modern baseball game. And it, unlike the various other baseball games I've played on consoles over the years, takes me back to my childhood when playing baseball was supposed to be fun.

The problem I've encountered with most console baseball games is they try to do too much simulation. Pull left stick down, push left stick up to swing bat. Heaven forbid you wobble to stick at all, or you'll be whiffing. And while you're making sure it's a straight pull, make sure to time your swing to a specific millisecond window where contact is possible. When pitching, it's the same, except be sure to remember to swirl your stick around to add proper spin and if you mess it up just a bit, you've got a passed ball on your hands and a score that's 20-0. And wow, fielding, don't even get me started on the nuance, insanity, and horrors of fielding in any baseball game released in the past 10 years.

I don't want to simulate every little, tiny sensation about the baseball experience. I just want to pick up a controller and feel like a superstar for several hours.

Super Mega Baseball lets me feel like a motherfucking superstar.

No, it's not licensed, so you won't be playing games in your favorite major league ballpark, nor will you have a character on screen with the name of your favorite player across the back of his jersey. Your team will be named "Crockodons" or "Beewolves" or "Herbasaurs" or "Moose." Your players are oddly shaped and proportioned, like a Nintendo Mii stretched to its limits, crossed with your character from Minecraft. But that's all aesthetic.

The mechanics of Super Mega Baseball feel like they go as deep as you want them to go. Where the big baseball titles force you into micromanaging every element of a player's motion (angle your bat with RS, swoop with LS, hit RT to exhale, push both sticks forward to swing), you can bat in Super Mega Baseball with nothing more than the A button. But, if you want to do more, you can start moving joysticks and fine-tuning angles; the controls are there for a more simulated experience. I suck at fielding in every damned baseball game I've played; Super Mega Baseball is no different. The controls exist in this game for a continuation of this sucking... except! Except I can almost completely opt out of fielding because if I don't override the characters, they field on their own.

"Fielding on their own sounds stupid," you're saying. Maybe so. But you can do all the running around the outfield you want, diving for balls, trying to steal homers by reaching over the fence.

I mean, the important takeaway here is that, even without getting deep into the various ways the game can be micromanaged, the controls let you do what you are wanting to do without frustration. I imagine (and I'm not deep enough to really say) that as you advance through harder difficulties, you'll find that you'll want to have that better control and you'll be able to start adding new moves to your repertoire.

Speaking of difficulty levels, the game measures difficulty by "EGO." There are 99 levels to EGO; 15 is the start default. It's marked "casual" and I destroyed it for the games I played at that level. I then dialed up to 20 (marked "medium") and... it's much less easy, although I've still be readily winning games. In addition to the difficulty, you've got your own personal level, which starts and 1 and advances upward as you accrue points. As long as your level is under your EGO, you'll earn points at a good rate. If you drop your EGO below your level, well, you may have fun but your ability to level up is hampered.

Anyway, I'm very enthusiastic about Super Mega Baseball. Picked it up as a part of Xbox Game Pass as a way to work on the November Game Pass Quest (10 hours in a "retro" game) and I'm pretty sure I've eclipsed 10 hours just this past weekend. This is the baseball game I need--nay, deserve. Take that as you will.