By: M T Glass
8 February 2012
For fans of baseball sims, there’s a new game in town — Digital Diamond Baseball– and it’s on pace to dethrone the reigning champions.
For the uninitiated, sims are different than video games — you take on the role of manager (and/or general manager) setting up leagues, divisions, schedules, line-ups, and pitching rotations. Then you play the games and manage your favorite team(s). You use your head and your heart — not your joystick and thumbs.
Over the years, I’ve played ‘em all from board games with little player cards and dice, to PC versions like Earl Weaver and Diamond Mind Baseball.
Digital Diamond Baseball is similar to the latter group but with one wonderful difference: you don’t need to continually purchase Season Disks.
Most Baseball sims ship with the most recent season, or “greatest teams” included. To play other teams or seasons, users must purchase additional season disks — often at $20 (or more) per pop. Not Digital Diamond Baseball (DDBB)
It ships with only 2 teams, but let’s you easily import any team or season from 1871 through 2011 — for free. You can even import up-to-the-minute, real stats for the current season! All of this is easy to do, using notable, reputable, free internet Baseball resources such as the famous Lahman database.
The game engine uses Bill James’ Log5 formulas for exceptional accuracy.
The DDBB website offers a collection of videos to walk new users through the steps involved to create the leagues — and you can create as many as you like. A forum allows users to share their library of leagues with others.
Version 2.0 of the game is available now for just $9.95 (you can try it for free, but games will be limited to 3 innings).
Look out DMB & SOM, there’s a new “expansion team” in the league and it looks like a winner!
Check it out yourself at: http://www.digitaldiamondbaseball.com
…tell ‘em M T sent ya.
THE JOUST 