Ken Griffey Jr.'s Winning Run

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Ken Griffey Jr.'s Winning Run

Developer(s)	Rare
Publisher(s)	Nintendo
Release date(s)	^NA June 1996
Genre(s)	Sports game
Mode(s)	Single player, multiplayer
Rating(s)	ESRB: K-A (Kids to Adults)
Platform(s)	Super Famicom/SNES
Media	32-Mbit cartridge

Ken Griffey Jr.'s Winning Run is a baseball video game developed by Rare for the Super NES that is named after the baseball player Ken Griffey Jr. The game features outfielders/infielders, batters, pitchers, and runners. The outfielders/infielders have to catch the ball and pass it back to the base; the batter has to accurately hit the ball and run; the pitcher has to throw the ball at the batter; and the runners have to avoid being thrown out when running around the bases. Home runs are central to the game, and are especially easy to hit with Griffey, who has the highest stats among all players in the game and has a notably large body in the game.

The game features the 28 MLB teams in existence at the time. You can play in a franchise mode, exhibition (single-game) play, and a home run derby mode, which particularly suits Griffey.

The game's title is derived from the final play of the 1995 American League Division Series featuring the Seattle Mariners and New York Yankees. On a play that is sometimes credited with "saving baseball in Seattle," Griffey scored the game's winning run all the way from first base, on a close play in the bottom of the 11th inning.

Due to the lack of a Major League Baseball Players' Association license, Griffey is the only player in the game to use his actual name. However, one of the fun and largely unknown parts of this game is identifying other MLB players based on the phony and sometimes pun-laden names given to them by developers. For example, the prolific and temperamental Albert Belle is transformed into "Frank Liberty" (Liberty Bell?). One team is composed entirely of comic book authors and illustrators, such as S. Ditko, F. Miller, and A. Moore.

[edit] Trivia

An ironic note about this game is that it was programmed by a British company, Rare, but was never released in the UK due to the non-existent interest in baseball in the UK. It was also one of the first video games to use computer generated, 3-D animation.
This is the first and only SNES title that was designed for a special, baseball bat controller.
Furthermore, the development team never played baseball in their life before the game (or indeed after it).^{[citation needed]}
There are several secret codes or controller keystrokes that can be entered at various times in the game. One of them unlocks an option to play with two teams that were nonexistent at the time - the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and another team representing what would become the Arizona Diamondbacks, although both teams were named right around the same time that the game was designed.