2K Sports Presents
Major League Baseball 2K6: Special Edition

The Xbox 360's first baseball title, Major League Baseball 2K6, was released last week and has been flying off the shelves! However, since its release, we have received feedback from you, the gamer, that helps us make better games. Following the release of this game, we received such an overwhelming response that we have decided to push forward on Major League Baseball 2K6: Special Edition, which will be in stores soon.

To be candid, we have received no small amount of criticism. In particular, many less experienced gamers have been put off by its online play. Many flooded the game servers expecting to have fun, when all they found was confusion and frustration.

It's no small secret that there is a strong correlation between Yankees fans and baseball novices/the mentally inhibited. As such, many have charged us with false advertising by featuring universally recognized Yankee Derek Jeter on the cover. This re-release is for the gamer who wishes to play a game about a sport whose appeal rests largely in its complexity, only without all the bothersome complexity. Below, we answer e-mails we've received regarding this matter with some exciting new features.

Every Team is the Yankees

From: jEtErBoI@yahoo.com
Subject: miner league teams??????????????

how do i navagate the team screen i just want to pick the yankees but its like jumping through haystacks

From: support@xbox.com
Subject: Re: other teams??????????????

The teams listed are in alphabetical order. You may find this useful, as you need only to scroll down the Ns to find your favorite. I hope this was helpful. Thanks for writing in!

From: jEtErBoI@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: Re: other teams??????????????

i didnt buy nba baseball so i could play a god damb alphabet puzzle

Well, we've listened! Our new team-select screen is far easier to navigate.

We realize that many of our fans fail to recognize the rationale behind including other teams in the game. This feature will save minutes of time that would have been spent staring at the ceiling and going like "pffff...shhh..." until you remember what letter New York starts with.

New Hitting/Pitching Interfaces

New to Special Edition is an augmented pitching system. Pressing the A button at any time will result in an automatic strikeout. Pressing B at any time will result in the batter hitting a home run. This cuts through all the nonsense while still presenting interesting situations - when do you press A, and when do you press B? (Hint: do not ever press B.)

We would like to offer our sincere apologies. The game shipped before the people at 2K Sports worked out a bug that resulted in pitchers sometimes trying to "deceive" the batter by throwing pitches that curve or break in different directions. Some are even purposefully thrown completely out of the strike zone! We have dedicated ourselves to ensuring that the hitting system is made fair. Pitchers don't throw that way in real life, and they won't in our game, either.

The most exciting addition we've made in this department is the ability to hit with two batters at once. Have them lean in to force a hit batter and automatically put your batters on first and second. Charge the mound and bloody the pitcher's face with the strength of two men. You can even put the same player on both sides of the plate and encourage the doppelgangers to fight to the death. Take that, slightly less evil Jason Giambi!

Notice also that there are no fielders behind the pitcher. This will force the pitcher to finally play fair and do his own dirty work. The no-fielder policy applies to you when you play defense as well. This is probably for the best, since you, as a Yankee fan, likely do not possess the level of abstract thought necessary to form the reasoning that it is, in fact, best if you willfully give the baseball to someone else and therefore do not bother with relaying the ball anyway.

Finally, we know you'll enjoy the smaller strike zone. After all, the pitcher's throwing a baseball, not a microwave.

Call People Faggots in New and Exciting Ways

This is a very sensitive issue. Of course, we at Microsoft celebrate diversity, and that extends to sexual orientation. However, we must balance this with the need for our customers to trivialize and demean homosexuality by using it in a negative connotation. Therefore, we have decided to implement a system that allows them to do so, but it's not like anybody's going to die or anything. Below is a screenshot taken right after the player attempts to throw a pitch outside the strike zone.

Repeated offenses will cause this message to appear on the pitcher's screen for the remainder of the game:

Of course, as always you should feel free to scream accusations regarding orientation into the microphone as well. This allows for some well-placed strategy: do you win with good pitching and timely hitting, or will you act obnoxious enough to make the other person quit?

Cheat

Hey, what's baseball without a little cheating? (Respectable!) New to Special Edition is the ability to make your pitcher run onto the field and throw three strikes before the batter gets there.

If it's crunch time, you can also enjoy this situation even if Alex Rodriguez is already at the plate.

Panic Buttons

Introducing a redesigned controller scheme for MLB 2K6.

Now, bailing at the first sign of losing is even easier! What's your panic mechanism? Do you throw your controller? Do you start gnawing on it? Do you lose control of your limbs and slip into uncontrollable spasms? If so, you will inadvertently press at least one of these buttons, quitting the game. This is a technique similar to that of the real-life New York Yankees, with the exception that an aging superstar of questionable moral grade will not materialize before you.

Shoot Motherfuckers

Getting up to put a different game in your console burns invaluable calories, so we brought Grand Theft Auto to you.

Bust Carl Pavano in the dome! Move into a log cabin in the countryside with Alex Rodriguez and go on a crime spree! Pay for sex with Derek Jeter, run him over, and get your money back! [Conduct activity shared with GTA character] with [player on the Yankees you wish to make fun of]!

Automatic Game-Winners

Yes. All right? God dammit. Yes.

I think they should eliminate the keeping of all statistics save for "times you sacrificed your body for an ultimately trivial out". As such, we've decided to grant anyone who sends Jeter flailing his lemuresque physique into a hard object/human being an automatic win. So have fun with that. Fuck this, I'm going to play RBI Baseball.

-Jon
jonbois@gmail.com

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