Although console games have the upper hand for most every genre of gaming, there’s one genre where the PC is still king, and that’s sports simulations. Be it basketball, soccer, football, college football, hockey or baseball, there is a simulation for you.

Baseball Mogul is one of the older baseball simulators out there. Originally released in the mid-90s, creator Clay Dreslough is still out in the forums trying to make the game the best he can, which is always a nice touch (of course it’s a lot easier for a few to help on a text based game vs a Halo with it’s cast of thousands of programmers, but I digress).

Anyway the Mogul series has been around for sometime, and not having been familiar with the series in the past, I took up Sports Mogul’s offer for a free download of the 2006 version of the game (available on their website). After some time, I went ahead and picked up the 2007 edition of the game.

For those unfamiliar, Baseball Mogul lets you control everything a General Manager would. From the draft, to selecting free agents, negotiating their contracts, setting the price of concessions, deciding where your team’s games should be televised, and so forth, it’s all your call.

In the past I have played games such as Out of The Park Baseball, which is similar in genre. I believe OOTP had many more options to edit and choose – such as being able to run stadium promotions to attract more fans. However, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as I believe Baseball Mogul gives you ‘enough’ to work with to keep you busy – it’s just not as anal-retentive detailed as some other games I’ve seen.

There are a lot of new features in the 07 edition, most notably a new graphical “pitch by pitch mode.” In the past you were stuck with nothing but text. This year, you’ll see a pitcher-batter interface and be able to click the pitch you’d like to throw. There’s also a one pitch mode that just shows you the ‘payoff’ of each at bat.

The idea is nice in theory; however it really doesn’t add a whole lot to the text based experience. If your batter hits a double, you won’t see the runner on second base. It’s kind of weird.

Anyway, let’s get back into the game. When you first start, you are asked what year’s rosters you would like to play. As an Orioles fan, anything after 1983 doesn’t exist, so you can go back into the 70s. With the Wayback machine set to 1971, I now see the Orioles roster with Brooks and Frank Robinson, Davey Johnson and Jim Palmer. Now we are talking!!

I am amazed at how easy it is to setup the lineup the way I want it – a simple drag and drop and it’s all done. Although the game says that rosters up to opening day 2006 are included, I found this year’s roster with the Orioles to be a little loopy. For example, Ramon Hernandez, the starting Catcher, was on the bench and Javy Lopez was the regular catcher. Stuff like this is nitpicky but you still have to manually fix it all.

Now that the lineups and rotations are set, it’s time to play ball. I go right into the game, and you can choose to watch the game as the General Manager (where you just observe), Manager (where you see the payoff pitch) or Player (where you call each pitch and attempt to swing at the ball). This screen is very close to what you see on MLB’s GameCast with an overwhelming amount of data. You’ll see pitch-by-pitch stats in the upper left corner (with speed, type and location), a batter by batter synopsis of the current inning, various other information and a button that lets you create a text file box score of the game.