Here’s a fun fact you may not have known about Shohei Ohtani, who will grace the cover of MLB The Show 22: The Los Angeles Angels’ two-way superstar is also a big-time manga fan — specifically the sports manga Major and Slam Dunk. So the developers at Sony’s San Diego Studio gave him a manga-inspired cover for the game’s collector’s editions.
What’s more, the cover is illustrated by Takashi Okazaki, the creator of Afro Samurai. “A normal Collector’s Edition cover wouldn’t suffice,” SIE San Diego’s Ramone Russell said on the PlayStation Blog. “Shohei is a once-in-a-generation athlete with superhero-like abilities on the field. What better way to bring that to life than to have worlds collide on a truly unique cover?”
What better way, indeed. Here are the SteelBooks with Okazaki’s rendering of Ohtani, who appears to have pyrokinetic abilities in addition to an 88-mph forkball and tape-measure home run power.
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The special editions featuring this cover are the $84.99 MVP Edition and the $99.99 Digital Deluxe edition, both of which are PlayStation 5 only. Both offer four days early access, the PS5 and PS4 versions of the games, plus a bunch of digital items and currency for use in the game’s Diamond Dynasty and other modes.
MLB The Show 22 launches April 5 (April 1 for the special editions) on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and, for the first time, Nintendo Switch. The game supports cross-platform play and progression across all consoles; the Switch version’s features are at parity with the PS4 and Xbox One editions.
