Every April when baseball season starts, I get a familiar itch to walk past my cobweb encased glove and my dusty Louisville Slugger, sit down, and play baseball video games.

As a PlayStation 3 owner, I had the privilege of spinning the 2013 iteration of MLB: The Show for more than 300 hours over the last year. Despite that commitment, MLB 13: The Show is not the perfect baseball sim, just as I’m sure that MLB 14: The Show won’t be. Could they be better? Absolutely, and I have a few ideas that I’ll get to that in the future but for a few moments, let’s look back at how far these games have come over the last three decades.

Released in 1988, R.B.I. Baseball deserves the honor of being called the first console sim thanks to its license with the MLBPA that allowed them to use real player names, but other games like Bases Loaded and Major League Baseball also had a hand in bringing about video game baseball’s first golden age. While the latter didn’t have real player names, it did have an MLB license, which meant that players could play as the Yankees or the Cardinals, with jersey numbers, positions, and skills matched up to let you know when you were playing as Willie McGee, even though Willie McGee wasn’t getting a cent. Poor Willie McGee.

The players in the Bases Loaded games weren’t modeled after real players, but the game (specifically Bases Loaded 2) was graphically ahead of the competition with a small selection of varied stances and a presentation that mimicked a real baseball broadcast with its centerfield view.