Baseball Mogul
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Baseball Mogul is a series of baseball simulation computer games created by Clay Dreslough and first published in 1997. Baseball Mogul was originally written in 1995, when Dreslough had the vision to combine a highly realistic replay baseball simulation with career play. His goal was to create a game that satisfied both hardcore baseball fans and casual gamers, who like the idea of running a virtual baseball franchise as well as re-creating realistic statistical contests. The latest installment, Baseball Mogul 2008, was released in March of 2007.
Baseball Mogul 2008® is the 10th edition of the that puts you in complete of any professional baseball team -- "the baseball game for fans who want their success on the field determined by their strategy, not their reflexes", according to the company website. Baseball Mogul is the only product that provides the option to begin play in any season of historical baseball, from 1901 to the current year.
Prior to Baseball Mogul 2007, all games were simulated. As of the 2007 version of the game, a play-by-play option has been added for those who want to control every single pitch of the game. You play the role of a general manager/manager/owner running a Major League team. You can also take control of each pitch as the player in each game.
Baseball Mogul is a low-budget product compared to games like MVP Baseball, since it relies primarily on text-based menus, but it is popular among baseball fans because of its accurate simulation and expansive options. Players have complete control over an entire baseball franchise, and have the ability to set batting lineups, make trades, and set ticket and concession prices.
[edit] Gameplay
When the user starts a new game, they must first choose from which year they will start. They then choose which of the 30 teams (or fewer, depending on what year they start in) to choose from. They also have the following options:
Equalize Cities: Equalizing the cities allows a player to play the game where all the cities have identical populations. Every city has 1,500,000 people and every region has 4,500,000 people. This gives an advantage to teams located in smaller regions, such as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, the Cincinnati Reds, and the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Shuffle All Teams: Randomly shuffles the players on every roster so each team has a new random set of players.
Fictional Players: Generates a whole new set of players with randomly generated statistics. One small concern with this mode is that it does not account for baseball's expansions. For example, a randomly generated player on the Tampa Bay Devil Rays team might have started his career with the Devil Rays in 1992, but the actual team did not come into existence until 1998.
Fictional Teams: Despite its name, it does not create new teams or use new cities that were previously not in baseball. It only changes the names of all the current teams and gives them new nicknames. (I.e: San Francisco Giants become "California Cowboys")
Historical Rookies: Uses historical baseball players and their associated data for the rookies in the Amateur Draft each January. (If you start in 2006, it is thus impossible to use historical rookies, and impossible to unselect Fictional Rookies.) If you elect to only use historical rookies in the late 1990s or beyond, there are often not enough players to draft due to a lack of data for rookies. Only players with major league experience can be drafted, thus it is impossible to draft players using Historical Rookies that never made it to the majors/are yet to make it to the majors.
Fictional Rookies: Uses randomly generated rookie players for the Amateur draft. Both historical and fictional rookies may be used together.
Simulation Mode: Decreases the fluctuations in players performances, allowing for a more accurate prediction of how a team will perform.
There are four levels of difficulty: Fan, Coach, Manager, and Mogul. In harder modes, the AI is tougher and your starting budget is smaller.
