Picture it. The Yankees’ Curtis Granderson is on second. Derek Jeter steps to the plate and strokes a single to left. Granderson tries to score on the play, but the throw is early and he’s tagged out by SpongeBob Squarepants. Yes, a giant human-sized SpongeBob SquarePants. Welcome to Nicktoons MLB, quite possibly the most unusual baseball game ever.

Nicktoons MLB features all 30 American and National League teams, with 9 position players and 2 pitchers per team, as well as 23 Nickelodeon cartoon characters, each of whom have player attributes like their major league brethren. This isn’t a hard core sim, so expect simple ratings like speed, contact, and power to define batters, while pitchers are rated on the strength of their pitch types. The Nicktoons characters in the game include favorites like Invader Zim, SpongeBob SquarePants and Patrick the StarFish, Ren and Stimpy, and more. Each of the Nicktoons characters maintain their distinct personality and features dialogue from the real voice actors. By comparison, the real major leaguers are a quieter and less colorful lot.

The game will feature 12 stadiums: six major league parks (including Wrigley Stadium in Chicago, Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, and AT&T Park in San Francisco) and six wacky Nicktoons-inspired creations such as SpongeBob SquarePants’ Poseidome. Adding to the Nicktoons flavour are other cartoon characters popping up in the stadium backgrounds.

The version on display at E3 was running on the Xbox 360, which showed off the game’s Kinect controls. In fact, Nicktoons MLB is the first baseball game on the Xbox 360 to incorporate Kinect controls. Given that Kinect couldn’t possible hope to easily recreate the controller experience for a more sim oriented baseball game, Nicktoons MLB is a perfect fit, as the controls can provide a much more accessible experience for younger players. Even better, two players can go head to head using Kinect, though if you’d rather not use Kinect, you can use the standard controller.

At E3, I had the chance to play the Xbox version of the game using both Kinect and the controller, and came away fairly impressed by both. With the controller, it felt like a fairly standard arcade-style baseball game with intuitive controls, mixing larger than life baseball stars with Nicktoons characters who look completely out of place, and yet totally right. With Kinect though, you can see the potential for the game to succeed at the family level, especially since the control scheme seems to simply everything.

Pitching is as simple as holding your arm at the correct angle for the pitch you want to throw. For batting, you swing as you would swing at a real pitch, and the game handles the rest. On each side of the game, raising both arms in the air enters turbo mode, which increases your offensive or pitching abilities. Baseball games are always about timing, so I was conciously trying to stay ahead of the pitches, especially knowing that Kinect games often have a bit of lag. By staying just a bit ahead, I was able to make good contact with the ball, but when I dropped to a slower swing, I was consistently behind on every pitch.

There’s definitely a role for Nicktoons MLB, providing a starting point for young baseball fans, while also offering families a simpler alterative to the more complex baseball games. If the final product lives up to expectations, I can see this becoming the first choice in a sports title for a lot of families.

Nicktoons MLB will be available on Wii, DS, and Xbox 360 in August 2011.

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