''Microsoft Baseball 2001'' is a

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball sport played between two team sport, teams of nine players each, taking turns batting (baseball), batting and Fielding (baseball), fielding. The game occurs over the course of several Pitch ...

game made for the

2000 Major League Baseball season The 2000 Major League Baseball season ended with the New York Yankees defeating the New York Mets in five games, for their third consecutive World Series title.

. It was developed and published by

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

, following the earlier games ''

Microsoft Baseball 3D 1998 Edition ''Microsoft Baseball 3D 1998 Edition'', also known as simply ''Microsoft Baseball 3D'', is a sports video game developed by Microsoft and WizBang! Software Productions. It was released for Microsoft Windows in 1998. It received praise for its grap ...

'' and '' Microsoft Baseball 2000''.

Gameplay

''Microsoft Baseball 2001'' uses the ''

Baseball Mogul ''Baseball Mogul'' is a series of career baseball management computer games created by game designer Clay Dreslough. The product was first published in 1997. The 27th and latest installment is ''Baseball Mogul 2024''. A proprietary database, inc ...

'' engine, which requires players to act as

general manager A general manager (GM) is an executive who has overall responsibility for managing both the revenue and cost elements of a company's income statement, known as profit & loss (P&L) responsibility. A general manager usually oversees most or all of ...

of an MLB franchise, forcing players to deal with realistic payroll constraints and city-related issues along the way.

Development and release

''Microsoft Baseball 2001'' was announced in February 2000. It was developed and published by

for

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. It was released in March 2000. The cover art features

Boston Red Sox The Boston Red Sox are an American professional baseball team based in Boston. The Red Sox compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) American League East, East Division. Founded in as one of the Ameri ...

shortstop

Nomar Garciaparra Anthony Nomar Garciaparra (; born July 23, 1973) is an American former Major League Baseball player and current SportsNet LA analyst. After playing parts of nine seasons as an All-Star shortstop for the Boston Red Sox, he played shortstop, Third ...

Reception

Aaron Curtiss, writing for

Knight Ridder Knight Ridder was an American media company, specializing in newspaper and Internet publishing. It was bought by McClatchy on June 27, 2006, allowing the latter to become the second largest newspaper publisher in the United States at the time ...

, praised the game's simplicity but considered it inferior to '' Sammy Sosa High Heat Baseball 2001''. Peter Olafson of ''

GamePro ''GamePro'' was an American multiplatform video game magazine media company that published online and print content covering the video game industry, video game hardware and video game software. The magazine featured content on various video ...

'' wrote that the game "feels unfinished--more like a step in the right direction than a destination."

References

{{reflist

External links

Official homepage
(down as of August 2006, via the web archive)
''Microsoft Baseball 2001''
at

MobyGames MobyGames is a commercial website that catalogs information on video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controlle ...

*https://web.archive.org/web/20060519052845/http://www.sportplanet.com/catchthefever/msbaseball/sbi.shtml 2000 video games Microsoft Baseball video games Microsoft games North America-exclusive video games Single-player video games Video games developed in the United States Windows games Windows-only games