can't believe all the complaints...

Think you are misunderstanding or maybe me not being clear enough:

The Japanese and Cuban cards are part of their own set that can be added on via CD-Rom, and Im assuming paper cards as well.
In other words they were doing the research for these players to use in general, not specifically for the online version-
am guessing just like when they added the NeL guys, they were thinking along the same lines and didn't realize how many people didn't want them as part of the regular ATG game.

curious if anyone on the boards has seen or played the cards in the cd game? if so a couple of player card examples would be nice?

Assume you mean the j/c cards. Have not seen them but here is the writeup strat has on their website concerning the 1986 Japanese season that is available.

The Hiroshima Toyo Carp (98-62) and Yomiuri Giants (97-63) vie for the Central League pennant. The champion Seibu Lions (93-67) and Kintetsu Buffaloes (89-71) contend in the Pacific League … American Randy Bass (.359-31-115) and Japanese Hall of Famer Hiromitsu Ochiai (.329-33-118) each won their league’s Triple Crowns. Bass set a still-standing record for the highest batting average in Japanese Baseball (.359 Major League equivalency).

You’ll find former Major Leaguers Bass, Warren Cromartie (.337-25-103), Dick Davis (.310-24-101), Leron Lee (.305-21-99), Greg “Boomer” Wells (.321-18-103) and more. Find out how they well they compete with Pacific League MVP Hiromichi Ishige (.302-18-94), Central League MVP Manabu Kitabeppu (24-6, 2.64) and nine members of the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame.

Player statistics have been adjusted for a 160-game season that can be played in stand-alone Japanese leagues or against Major League teams from 1985-87. The package also includes the three All-Star games and the Nippon Series teams, with lineups.

Draw your own conclusions on whether these players would have actually produced these numbers against 1986 MLB players.

i didn't think the jap cards that were to be added were just from the 1986 season or am i misunderstanding?

Im not sure weather to address this or just leave ignorance where it is.

I read this as the reply would be ignorant. "Weather" or not I am correct is another matter.

I do not know if the 1986 season was the only Japan season they were considering adding. I just know it was the only one I saw listed on their web site when I checked. Of course they could create cards specially for any given season, especially if it is not going to need to conform to any statistical standard. Clearly looking at the Americans who played in Japan in that 86 season and the numbers they associated with those players the formula they used for major league equivalency were in error.

There has been some backlash against the criticism being given to ATG. My thoughts.

As to disenchantment with the new features. There were none. So .......

Regarding comments about cards included I think that can be viewed in two ways.
1 - The extent to which they deviated from what the community expressed as desired by the polls conducted. To the extent those were ignored criticism is justified.

2 - A lot of it I do not see as any different from the fuss raised after MLB announces annual allstar selections, or postseason awards, or HOF elections. Always some discussion about players who were slighted, who should have been selected, etc. This is just normal natural baseball talk. It is not bad. If I were the game company I would be more concerned about the number of people who were commenting and talking about the new cards than I am about criticism. In business don't worry when they talk about you. Worry when they don't because you have become irrelevant. Lotus would love it if people were still cricicizing their spreadsheets. Wordperfect would love it if people were still talking about wordperfect, Quatro Pro, or their database program which I cannot even remember the name of in spite of being a former user.

it would be nice to have the cards as an option so we could veiw them or better yet, Strat could allow us to view them vote on the 3 choices. integrate into the 8, make them available as an option only package, or none of the cards at all. i thought the j/c cards would be similar to the first release of the negro league cards.

I agree it would be nice if they wanted to introduce the j/c cards in to the game if they provided links so people could see what they were proposing. But I disagree adding them would be like the first release of the NeL cards. There has been considerable research to show how those players actually performed against MLB competition. While MLB itself was not integrated many of the best MLB players competed against the NeL players in exhibitions to make extra money. So you could get direct comparisions of how Josh Gibson for example hit against quality MLB pitching.

While with the Japanese players the only cross play you had was a handful of MLB players going across the pacific and playing a very small handful of games. The quality of the MLB players was not always significant and the number of games was very limited. And given the political situation with Cuba there has been no mixing of Cuban league and MLB at all prior to the World Baseball Classic and even that is a recent and limited sample.

The circumstances surrounding the NeL players and the j/c players is like night and day.

For those who are against complaining:

how do you think we got ATG8, for good or bad, in the first place????

Its because a few folks- I think Frank Mansueto was one of them here, kept starting threads complaining that we didnt have any new cards and we wanted em.

Absolutely nothing would've happened without it- so lets try get some perspective.

Actually, we didn't even remotely get ATG 8 - what we got was ATG 7.1 at best.....