Background | Year of Release | Media | Mini-Reivew | The Result

System: SNES Developer: Rare Publisher: Nintendo Players: 1-2 Save: Battery Genre: Sports

In the 16-bit era, the SNES never had the sports line-up that the Sega Genesis had. Often times Nintendo would commission a second party developer to create a sports title that would only be available on Nintendo's system. In 1996, Nintendo asked then superpower-developer Rareware to make a baseball game.

North America: June 1996
Japan: Unknown
Europe: Unknown

Screeshots: 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5

Ken Griffey Jr.'s Winning Run has an interesting developmental story behind it. Nintendo owned the Seattle Mariners baseball team. At the time this title was being developed, Mariners star Ken Griffey Jr. was arguably the best player in the game. Nintendo singed him to a deal that would eventually span 3 titles: Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball, Ken Griffy Jr.'s Winning Run and Ken Griffey Jr.'s Slugfest. These games were for the SNES, SNES and Nintendo 64 respectively.

Nintendo wanted Winning Run to sell robustly and they thought that Rare's superb graphical capabilities would make an excellent baseball game and steal some of Sega's sports thunder. This was a challenging game for Rare because being a British company, they really had no understanding of the sport of Baseball. But Rare was persistent and they did there research watching tons of Seattle Mariners games on Nintendo's expense.

Ken Griffey Jr's Winning Run is essentially a super-sized version of the RBI Baseball games for the NES. It has quick arcade like controls but tons of play modes and options. It's a solid sports title. However, this game is just like other baseball games, it really has nothing new to offer over previous baseball games.

It's also interesting to note that this game did nothing to curve Sega's sports genre dominance during the 16-bit era.

Score - 8.1

Not a classic!

Page by Player Guy Forever

09/20/2004