My electronic baseball experience dates back to the early 90’s where I began my rookie career with the Hardball series from Accolade. Time warp to the mid-90’s and you would have found me dabbling with Microsoft’s Baseball game, and most recently I played the atrocity called World Series Baseball 2K1 for the Dreamcast – a game so bad I couldn’t even bring myself to play the 2K2 sequel.

Previously, I had played and reviewed the GameCube and PS2 versions of this title, so going in for my third time was starting to wear thin at the gaming level, but it did afford me an excellent opportunity to make some comparisons between the three versions.

The generic low-budget menus are still here, but once I got into the game All-Star Baseball 2003 continued to amaze me with its slick presentation and feature-rich gameplay that rivals any network broadcast of America’s favorite pastime. And who better to bring this game to your living room than Acclaim. These wizards have repeatedly delivered quality baseball games that have managed to mix challenging gameplay with realistic simulation qualities. Combine all that with MLB licensing and you get to experience this gorgeous game with all the current players, teams, stadiums, and stats.

This latest version is loaded with tons of features that will appeal to the casual ballplayer or the most devout follower of the sport. Check out this starting line-up:

• All 30 Major League teams, including logos and uniforms
• More than 900 players
• Official stadiums, with active dugouts and bullpens, real time scoreboards and jumbotrons, with stadium features
• All-new player models, featuring 3-D Cyberscan technology, giving All-Star Baseball 2003 the most realistic representation for player faces ever seen in a video game
• Future throw technology allows players to make incredible super-smooth catches and throws like never before
• Innovative 3D batting interface and power/contact swing selection
• User control over check swings
• Never-before-seen broken bats
• Season awards like the MVP, Cy Young, Rookie Of The Year, and Gold Glove
• Incredible gameplay depth with 10 game modes, including Exhibition, Season, Career, Franchise, Expansion, All-Star Game, Series, Manager, Home Run Derby and Batting Practice
• Franchise Mode allows users to play and build their favorite team for up to twenty consecutive seasons
• All-new Expansion Play allows baseball fanatics to choose a city, stadium and team logo, and add that team into the Major leagues for season play
• All-new Expansion draft, whereby users will draft from a pool of unprotected players and build a team of free agents and minor leaguers
• First time ever -- official in-game player trading cards, which enable users to collect, trade and unlock cheat codes throughout the game
• More than 50 stadiums to choose from, including 9 classic and 10 expansion stadiums
• Cooperstown Hall Of Fame team, featuring favorite sluggers from the past, such as Mike Schmidt, Reggie Jackson and Yogi Berra
• Seven authentic stadium camera angles for television broadcast views
• First time ever -- a 3-man broadcast booth with Bob Brenly (Manager of the Arizona Diamondbacks, the 2001 World Series Champions), Thom Brennaman and Steve Lyons.

For you diehard baseball lovers, you will drool over the new Expansion and Franchise modes. The Franchise mode in ASB 2003 has to be the most intricate and complex in computer baseball history. Your Xbox will track your stats for 20 seasons and the AI will always be tweaking the other teams, trading players, signing on new ones, etc. If playing an entire 162-game season threatens to alienate your wife, kids, or friends, you can always opt for the computer to play any or all of these games to speed things up.

Frequently overlooked in sports titles are the awards, and baseball certainly has a lot of awards to offer such as Gold Gloves, Silver Sluggers, MVP, Cy Young award, and many others. If you are playing the Franchise mode the game will track all your team’s awards over the entire 20 seasons.

Saving games and seasons is no problem thanks to that big hard drive on your Xbox. PS2 and GameCube owners had to dedicate almost entire memory cards to saving a season - Nintendo users even had to buy a custom extra-large memory card.

The Xbox controller works great with ASB 2003. The 4-button layout maps to each respective base when fielding the ball and the white button send the ball to the cutoff man. The D-Pad maps to the bases when controlling your runners and the left stick moves the active player while the right stick configures your team formations. It’s all very intuitive and you will master the controls in just a few innings.

Mastering the controls is one thing but mastering the game is another. ASB 2003 is hard, plain and simple. After over 100 games on three different systems I still get beat by the computer. I can make contact with the ball and get my fair share of singles and doubles, but when the computer is knocking them out of the park or getting in-the-park triples, you begin to realize that the computer AI is really good. You have to learn the teams and the players, watch those stats, and play smart and conservative if you want to win.

The batting and pitching interface is excellent; perhaps the best I’ve ever experienced in a computer baseball game. A transparent box represents the strike zone and a wedge-shaped icon shows the sweet spot. You can rotate this wedge with the right stick to control the vertical and horizontal angle at which the ball leaves the bat. Of course it’s up to you to guess where the pitch it going to pass through the box and have the wedge waiting for the ball. If you guess the pitch you get an extra large contact area but you still have to time the swing with the pitch. You can choose between a normal and a power-swing with a smaller area of contact. Connecting with the ball is all about timing, but connecting with the sweet spot is half luck and half intuition. But when you do, someone in the stands is going to have a souvenir.

Once you hit the ball you can easily run the bases with the left or right trigger buttons. These triggers also toggle the view ports that show any current men on base and their lead offs. Tagging up and stealing are all just as intuitive and there are plenty of computer-assisted options you can toggle on or off in the options menu to assist you with many of these advanced plays.

Defense is just as intuitive and with the new future-throw technology you can pull off some super-smooth plays. The way this system works is that while you are running your player toward the target representing where the ball is going to land you can press the button for the base you want to throw to. Once your player makes contact with the ball he will throw the ball to that base in one smooth motion often saving precious seconds that could make the difference between an out or a man safe on base.

Pitching is a simple matter of picking the pitch and then trying to fool the batter on where you are going to throw it. The batter won’t know which pitch you are picking but he will have an initial idea of where the ball is going. Once you begin the pitch you can tweak the final throw, but this is a double-edge sword. If you tweak the pitch too much you may inadvertently throw outside the strike zone. The control pad will rumble when you get near the edge of the box which is a nice covert touch. You can also bring up a sub-menu that lets you get all sorts of detailed stats on previous pitches and their results.

Most sports games are played from a camera view that is often from the sidelines or at high isometric angles that don’t require the detail and quality that a game such as baseball does. The close-up angles and level of detail in ASB 2003 is simply amazing from the fabric of the players’ jerseys to the 5 o’clock shadow on the pitcher's face.

All the players have realistic gameplay and idle animations based on complex motion-capture technology. They’ll pound the plate with their bat or tap their heels as they wait for the pitch. You might see a player chewing gum or even blowing a bubble. Knock a zinger past 2nd base and watch the referee dance out of the way to avoid interfering with the play.

All of the component animation is blended together to create a seamless series of moves that offer the ultimate in realism. Players will run, dive, throw all in motion so fluid you would never know it was a combination of various animation routines. The clipping/collision detection problems in the PS2 version are not as apparent in this version, perhaps a benefit of the nVidia engine.

The stadiums are brought to life with animated crowds that still react in unison. Up close you can see some individuality and it's obvious the crows is captured from live video. Other details like giant video screens, perfectly manicured lawns, fresh chalk lines, textured dirt, and all the banners and ads that give each stadium its own identity add to the authenticity of each stadium. You will even get to enjoy the team’s mascot doing their own unique routines on the sidelines to get the crowd jazzed up during lulls in the action.

The camera angles are all pretty standard stuff, but I was surprised and disappointed to find there was no view available from the pitcher’s perspective. This has always been an option in every baseball game I have played previously and one I prefer when playing by myself. The rest of the camera work is network quality. The angles and panning motion are excellent and you never lose sight of the ball. If your player is off-screen he is represented with an arrow until you can run him onto the same shot as the ball.

There are plenty of instant replays with slow motion and special effects. These can quickly become annoying and time consuming if you watch them after every play. Fortunately you can skip them with a simple button tap.

The menus are as bad as the game graphics are good. They are stark and simplistic and simply don't do the overall game justice. There are some interesting detail and status screens, such as the weather report that brings up a weather map of the USA and a detailed forecast for the city where the next game is being played.

The music is decent. There is nothing too spectacular in the menus but the in-game organ music is cheerful and adds to the ballpark atmosphere. You get the final few bars from the National Anthem at the beginning of each game and that’s about it for the musical content in this game.

The Xbox version features a Dolby Digital mix but I didn't notice any improvement over the PS2 or the GameCube versions. Given the missed opportunity of 3D positional sound in a baseball diamond I was more than mildly disappointed.

While ASB 2003 supports up to four players anymore than two is probably going to just get in the way. I found the game quite enjoyable with two people even though I generally lost worse to my friends than when I played the computer. No computer AI can ever replace the random and often illogical thought process of a human opponent.