MVP 06: NCAA Baseball is the fourth edition of the baseball video game series developed by Electronic Arts. Because of Electronic Arts' loss of the Major League Baseball (MLB) license to Take Two Interactive in 2005, which now has the exclusive MLB license, the publishers decided to transition the MVP series to feature NCAA baseball, joining the publisher's NCAA football and basketball lines. MVP 06 was released on January 18, 2006 for the Xbox and PlayStation 2 consoles. The athlete on the cover is former Texas Longhorn David Maroul.
Changes to gameplay
While MVP 06 offers several large changes to gameplay in batting and fielding to reflect the switch to the collegiate game (aluminum bats, fielding by collegiate players), pitching remained essentially unchanged. Also, MVP 06 offers the player an option to change hitting and fielding to "classic" mode, reverting the controls to those of MVP Baseball 2005.
Load and fire batting
MVP 06 offers a brand new method for controlling the batter called "load and fire" batting. The player takes control of the batter's body by pressing and holding a button to lift the hitter's leg at the correct time so the hitter can use his hips to rip into the ball.
Precision throw control
The game also features a new precision throw control. Players use the right analog stick in order to throw the ball to the bases. If a player holds the button too long, he can overthrow the base, and if he does not hold the throw button long enough the ball could fall short, likely causing an error.
Create-a-Ballpark mode
In addition to the features mentioned above, the game has also improved the "create-a-ballpark" feature. The player can set the distance and height of the walls, as well as the surrounding backdrop, the field surface, and the size of foul territory. It could be convenient to MVP Baseball 2005 fans that there are preset walls that resemble those for all Major League ballparks, but instead of mentioning the parks' names, the selection involves the names of the cities.
NCAA stadiums
Notable stadiums in the game include:
- Rosenblatt Stadium (home of the College World Series)
- Arizona (Kindall Field)
- ASU (Packard Stadium)
- Arkansas (Baum Stadium)
- Baylor University (Baylor Ballpark)
- California State-Fullerton (Goodwin Field)
- Clemson University (Doug Kingsmore Stadium)
- Florida State University (Dick Howser Stadium)
- Georgia Tech (Russ Chandler Stadium)
- LSU (Alex Box Stadium)
- Miami (Mark Light Field)
- Oxford-University Stadium (Swayze Field)
- Mississippi State (Dudy Noble Field)
- Nebraska (Hawks Field)
- Notre Dame (Frank Eck Stadium)
- Rice (Reckling Park)
- Stanford (Sunken Diamond)
- USC (Dedeaux Field)
- St. John's (The Ballpark at St. Johns)
- Tennessee (Lindsey Nelson Stadium)
- Texas (Disch-Falk Field)
Conferences featured in the game
Fourteen conferences that comprised 150 college teams as of the 2005-2006 season were featured in the game. Some teams from the conferences are not included, and because of this, the number of teams in the game is 128.
- Atlantic Coast Conference (full)
- Big East Conference (minus DePaul, Marquette, Providence, and Syracuse)
- Big Ten Conference (minus Wisconsin who doesn't have a baseball team)
- Big 12 Conference (minus Iowa State and Colorado)
- Big West Conference (full)
- Conference USA (minus SMU, Tulsa, and UTEP)
- Missouri Valley Conference (minus Drake)
- Mountain West Conference (minus Colorado State and Wyoming)
- Pacific-10 Conference (minus Oregon, who did not have a team at the time)
- Patriot League (minus American and Colgate)
- Southeastern Conference (full)
- Sun Belt Conference (minus Denver and North Texas, who do not have baseball teams)
- Western Athletic Conference (minus Boise State, Idaho, and Utah State)
- West Coast Conference (full)
Soundtrack
All of the bands on the soundtrack are signed to Victory Records. Songs are listed in alphabetical order by artist.
| Artist | Song | Album |
|---|---|---|
| Action Action | “Paper Cliché” | An Army of Shapes Between Wars |
| Aiden | “Die Romantic” | Nightmare Anatomy |
| Bayside | “Devotion And Desire” | Bayside |
| Hawthorne Heights | “This Is Who We Are” | If Only You Were Lonely |
| Silverstein | “Smile In Your Sleep” | Discovering the Waterfront |
| The Forecast | “These Lights” | Late Night Conversations |
| The Audition | “Approach the Bench" | Controversy Loves Company |
| The Black Maria | "Organs" | Lead Us To Reason |
| The Junior Varsity | "Get Comfortable" | Wide Eyed |
| Waterdown | "Repeater" | All Riot |
See also
- MVP Baseball series
- MVP Baseball 2005