A good week for Sports Sim Fans.. 3 new releases this week

For a while, we were kinda in a rut in  the text sim scene. For a while, all we had was the latest graphical releases from the usual suspects, and trust me, there's nothing sadder then a text sim gamer who gets disappointed by a graphical game not playing the way it should, or producing unrealistic results.

But that sadness has gone away, for text simmers as three newreleases this week have come out, and filled the void.

First off, is the latest game in the Out of the Park series of baseball text sims. The latest version, which shipped today to preorders (with a full release scheduled for Monday), allows the intrepid baseball fan to replay all of baseball history, from the days of Tris Speaker, Honus Wagner, and Babe Ruth, to the modern superstars today. Ever wonder what would happened if the trade of Joe DiMaggio for Ted Williams (that nearly happened in real life) happened for real? You can do that here. Plus, there's a random start option, that can see all the players in history jumbled up, so your 1975 league could see Cy Young pitching to A-Rod, with stats expected in the era (so you can find out how many homers Hammerin Hank Aaron would have in the early 90's, when anyone could hit 30)

Then we switch to golf.. for those of you who aren't joystick junkies, Action PC Golf is scheduled to release this week offering season replays and a bunch of photo-realistic courses to play on. It's a nice change from Tiger Woods, as you sometimes get the feeling that the game's playing you, not you playing the game (that you can't trust the other results it's generating, because you have no idea how the other golfers scores are being generated).

And finally, also in the vein of "throwing a sport's history into a blender and seeing what happens as a result". comes Fast Break Pro Basketball 2013, the latest game in the very highly regarded Fast Break Basketball series. This too, offers a random start setup if you so choose (Jason Kidd to Magic Johnson, who feeds it inside to Wilt Chamberlain for the jam?), but the series has been known for ultra tight, and realistic game play, and indepth player generation (you can generate a player in the series college games, export it as part of a draft class, and then import it into FBPB13 and it remembers all their college history.

So, for the text simmer, these three games, along with perennial favorite Football Manager (what we Yanks call soccer), the beta of OOTP Developments hockey sim (Franchise Hockey Manager) and rumors of continuing work on the front runner Front Office Football series, it's gaming nirvana.