R.B.I. Baseball is coming back again for the 2015 season (Video)
If you’re a baseball fan of the right age, you can hit play on the video above, listen to the first few seconds of the song that’s playing and immediately be taken back to your childhood. The “R.B.I. Baseball” theme song has that power.
After reviving the classic baseball video game in 2014, Major League Baseball Advanced Media announced Monday that “R.B.I. Baseball” is coming back for 2015 with an assortment of new features and Chicago Cubs slugger Anthony Rizzo on its cover.
MLBAM specifically brought back “R.B.I. Baseball” as an alternative to the industry-leading “MLB The Show” series. The point of “R.B.I.” is having a quick baseball video game that’s easy to play, whether you’re an experienced gamer or a novice one. It sticks to the do-everything-with-two-buttons way of old NES games. Some gamers weren’t pleased that the game didn’t look more like its 8-bit predecessor, but the first “R.B.I. Baseball” reboot did accomplishment its goal of being easy for all ages to grasp.
New for 2015, according to MLBAM:
BALLPARKS: Completely redesigned authentic Major League ballparks for all 30 franchises, each crafted with detailed design characteristics fans will easily recognize.
FULL ROSTERS: Play with complete 25-man Major League rosters for all 30 teams, modifying your batting order or pitching rotation at any point. Set the active 25-man roster from each franchise’s 40-man roster.
STAT TRACKING: Track batting and pitching statistics in season mode for the first time ever, including viewable team, player and season league leaderboards.
ONLINE PLAY: Choose to play in online multiplayer mode in friendly and ranked games.
GAMEPLAY SETTINGS: Pick your competition level – Easy, Medium or Hard.
PC & MAC DEBUT: Introducing availability for personal computers on the Steam platform, coming this spring.
With its new expanded rosters, the game will have more than 1,000 players, which is a big improvement over the 2014 version. Online play is also an important addition that should fuel the growth of the game, since it’s available on smartphones in addition to PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
Here are some new screenshots from “R.B.I. Baseball 15”
MLBAM hasn’t announced a release date yet for “R.B.I. Baseball 15,” but you can bet it’ll be out in time for opening day.
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Mike Oz is an editor for Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz