Publisher: Nintendo
Release Date: October 18, 1985
Even this makes me miss real baseball
I talked about Baseball a little bit in my Excitebike post. I described it as being two years old in 1985 and showing its age. Honestly now that I have played it some more I think I was being a little generous. This was one of the first games released by Nintendo on the Famicom but really it plays even older than that. It feels like a slightly updated version of Atari’s 70s baseball game Home Run. It gives you about as little control over the action as you could possibly have and still call it a baseball game. The whole time I played I felt like the manager of the saddest and slowest minor league team. Imagine a single-A affiliate comprised of nothing but catchers and you get the idea.
The word baseball made out of baseballs! Now that's basebally!
The game starts up with a nice title screen which gives the false impression that this is going to be a quality title. The first sign that something is wrong starts to set in quick however as the only options are a single one player game and a single two player game. There is no season or playoff mode of any kind to be found. The teams are represented by single letters which supposedly represent some of the real teams. It doesn’t matter though because none of the players have names, stats, or positions. This makes pitching completely random because there’s no way to pitch to an individual player’s weakness. It’s not like you can throw off speed pitches to the power hitters and fastballs to the weak contact hitters. You just have to pick a random pitch and hope for the best. The fielding is computerized so I hope you enjoy watching your shortstop miss easy grounders and then chase the ball halfway up the outfield. That’s not exactly Allen Trammell and Brooks Robinson out there.
Of course with the focus being completely on hitting and pitching this could lead to some pleasant arcade action, but it’s a little too slow to be very thrilling. I suppose I shouldn’t expect too much speed from a 1983 game, but earlier baseball titles had worse graphics and speedier play so I’m not sure if it’s a reasonable trade off. I could see it being more fun in two player mode since its limitations would work for both players. I don’t remember playing this one with my brother, but we had fun playing all the lousy Sega Master System sports games together, so we probably would’ve had fun with this one too. Still, the NES launch was full of two player games so it’s not like you had to get Baseball if you wanted to play with your buddy.
All in all this game was a major disappointment. I am a huge fan of baseball and baseball video games so I was hoping for some old school fun. It’s just too slow, too limited, and too frustrating to be any fun. I know some people like this one, and I get that. Nostalgia can be a powerful influence. I never played this one as a kid though and I can objectively say that it’s not very good. I am going to put it just above Bad Street Brawler because it has a potentially fun two player mode. It’s the first disappointing launch title, but we still have several generically named sports titles to go. I hope at least one of them is fun to play. It’s all even again with NES games being 2-2.
1. Super Mario Odyssey
2. Galaga
3. Donkey Kong
4. Exodus: Ultima III
5. Pac-Mania
6. Pac-Man
7. Excitebike
8. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX
9. Mickey’s Racing Adventure
10. Metro-Cross
11. Gaplus
12. Dragon Spirit
13. Pinball (NES)
14. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)
15. Red Sea Crossing
16. Baraduke
17. Gamma-Attack
18. The Legend of “Valkyrie”
19. Galaxian
20. Evoland
21. Defunct
22. Gyruss (2600)
23. Looney Tunes Racing
24. Squidlit
25. Baseball
26. Birthday Mania
27. Bad Street Brawler
No comments:
Post a Comment