Baseball Stars (1989)
Developed by: SNK
Released in: NA, JP
When it comes to video games, the sports genre is uncharted waters for me. I’ve played and enjoyed a few in my time, but usually over at a friends’ house, or a demo kiosk at a store… they’re fun, but never something I chose to dabble in during my own free time. Upon seeing the mind-boggling number of sports games on the NES, I realized that by the end of my playing the entirety of the library, I was either going to be converted into a sports game fanatic or hate every single solitary second of them.
Thank god Baseball Stars turned out to be rad.
There’s a simple appeal to the sports genre; pick ’em up, play a game’s worth and leave it there. I’ve heard through the grapevine that more modern, microtransaction filled sports titles have full blown story modes to play through, in which you create an avatar and follow its journey from a fresh faced rookie getting their big break all the way up to playing in the annual Very Big Important Game. Y’know, that one overhyped end of season match-up that lets people who generally don’t give a crap about sports have a chance to give a bit of a crap about them for two hours a year?
Hold on, I think I had a point here somewhere.
Oh yeah, I was leading up to saying this: those modern day sports blockbusters all owe a little something to Baseball Stars.
Released in 1989, Baseball Stars is one of the very first sports games – if not the first – to have a Create-A-Team mode, customizable players, in-depth player stats, and working your way up from being a go-nowhere team to becoming prestigious all-stars.
There’s a lot of levelling up, earning money, and allocating stat points in Baseball Stars… and that sounds an awful lot like RPG territory to me! Indeed, this baseball game borrows a lot from the role playing genre, which was taking Japan by storm at the time of its release. That totally took me by surprise; I was expecting to boot this thing up, bunt a few foul balls, lose horribly and call it a day, but then they present me with all this depth and variety! It’s highly innovative and shakes up a genre that could have done with a bit of shaking up, even back then.
As cool as all of this was, reading around online told me that it can take upwards of a month to build a top-tier team. That’s a real life month, by the way. So for the sake of my limited free time I opted to play as one of the pre-made teams instead.
You get eight teams to choose from, and they’re all unique in their own ways. Their iconography is especially interesting; I’d happily wear any of these designs on a t-shirt on my way to the local Wal Mart to buy some carrots, or whatever. Like any good game, each team has its strengths and weaknesses, offering a lot of variety to those who just want to hop on and play a quick round. My personal favourite team is the Ninja Blacksox, because they’re literally just a bunch of ninjas clad in all-black who came to play baseball.
That was one of my favourite parts of this game; the little touches that really made it pop. Every team has a fun gimmick; from the Ghastly Monsters all being named after famous horror movie characters, to the Lucky Ladies being a unique team consisting of all women. Another one of my favourites was the SNK Crushers; with the players named after the developers of the game, they’re a team that sucks in every regard! That’s pretty funny.
By the way, in case you’re looking to find out what the best team in Baseball Stars is, that would have to be the American Dreams. They have zero weaknesses and are absolute bastards to be against. If you want to win, pick these guys and have yourself a good time.
In addition to being wildly innovative and having a cheeky sense of humour, Baseball Stars plays like a dream, too. Is there anything this game can’t do? Fast and fluid, the controls are very easy to understand; the A button swings the bat and throws the ball, and the control pad does the rest of the work (with a few functions from the B button factoring in here and there).
My complaints about Baseball Stars are minimal – so minimal that I can only think of one! And that one is that it suffers from the folly of a lot of sports games: when the CPU is the one on defence, they become absolute GODS who catch every single thing you throw at them. When I first picked up the game, I couldn’t get a single base from the opposing team when I was up to bat! I was hooting and hollering like I was a watching a real ball game on TV, except it was totally my fault the team I was rooting for sucked. Unless you’re a pro and can get above average hits in regularly, more often than not, you’ll be switching to play on defence before your ass touches the ground. It takes a lot of practice to get decent at hitting, but Baseball Stars is so GOOD, you’ll want to put that time in. It was the most satisfying feeling on earth when I finally eked out a win against the Ghastly Monsters, as they have the best defensive play in the game.
So that’s Baseball Stars. This is a game I can definitely see myself coming back to in the future, because it’s just so damn fun. I loved the hell out of it. Any game that can make me yell at my TV and crack up laughing within the span of three seconds is a good one in my books. Even if you’re not typically a fan of sports games – like I was – I’d recommend it. It’s a home run! It’ll steal second base when you least expect it! It’ll throw a fast ball right into your heart! I’m running low on baseball lingo! It’s just really good!
Initial Interest Rating: 6 out of 10
Final Rating:
NESJunk 