The Bases are in fact still Loaded.

Admiring the home run ball

To Beat: Get a perfect 100 rating against a Level 5 team
Played: 5/27/21
Difficulty: 4/10
My Difficulty: 2/10
My Video: Bases Loaded 3 Longplay

The NES has several game series with an excellent third installment. Super Mario Bros. 3 is one of the best games of all time. Castlevania III: Dracula’s Curse is a fan favorite with an all-time soundtrack made even better when utilizing the expanded chips on the Famicom. Dragon Warrior III is often considered one of the best RPGs on the NES and one I personally enjoyed very much. Ninja Gaiden III is awesome, as is TMNT III: The Manhattan Project. Mega Man 3 might well be the best of the 6 NES installments, at least to some. Bases Loaded 3 is not considered, well, at all, when talking about great 3rd games of a series. But I can confidently say that Bases Loaded 3 is my favorite game in the series for one very specific reason that I’ll get into.

For more information on the Bases Loaded series, check out my reviews for Bases Loaded and Bases Loaded II: Second Season. As before, this review will focus primarily on the changes between the previous installments. Let’s get started.

Bases Loaded 3 was first released in Japan, originally named Moero!! Pro Yakyuu ’90: Kandouhen. That translates roughly to Burn!! Pro Baseball ’90: Exciting Edition, or perhaps Impressive Edition. It was released in Japan in July 1990, about six months after Bases Loaded II reached North America. The US release came in September 1991. Here it was called just Bases Loaded 3 but it features MLB Hall of Famer Ryne Sandberg on the box cover. Like the other installments, the game was developed by Tose and published by Jaleco in both regions.

They really want you to understand what’s going on here.

Let’s get the biggest change out of the way first. Bases Loaded 3 does not require playing a full season to beat the game. In fact, there is no season mode at all! This game features five difficulty levels for the opposing team, but you’ll always start off playing the weakest, Level 1 team. At the end of each game, you are given a special screen and a rating value. I’ll spare the full details until later, but you can score up to a 100 rating with very good, efficient play. The rating determines which difficulty level you’ll face in the next game. If you lose a game, or have a low rating, you’ll go back to the base Level 1 team. To beat this game, you need to earn a match against a Level 5 team and then beat that team with a perfect 100 rating.

Here are other changes between versions that take place prior to starting up a match. From the title screen you can select Watch mode to watch the CPU square off against itself. Choose the teams and settings, then sit back and enjoy. There is also an Edit mode for creating your own team. Behind the scenes, there is a special team designated for the Edit mode, so you can only build and update that specific team. You can change any of the players’ names and stats with no restrictions or limits. Build the super team of your dreams, go crazy! In this game there are 12 standard teams to choose from, plus the Edit team. After choosing teams, pick one of three stadiums to play in. Each stadium has different outfield dimensions, so you can opt for the pitcher’s park with long distances or a more hitter friendly park with closer walls down the lines. You can also adjust your starting lineup and pitcher as you can in the other games.

The pitching is tweaked a little for Bases Loaded 3. You begin a pitch the same way as before, hold any direction and press A to target a specific location. From here on, it is handled differently. To increase the direction of the pitch, tap A between the windup and delivery. The more you tap A, the more the pitch travels in that direction. For example, for a right-handed batter, you can throw a pitch up and away by holding Up and Left before winding up with A. This pitch will target the upper left of the strike zone. By adding A button taps before the pitch is thrown, you can aim the pitch further up and away beyond the strike zone. This gives you a more granular adjustment on where to aim pitches. During the windup, to throw the ball faster, you’ll hold Up on the D-pad. Because the D-pad only increases speed during the windup, you really can’t curve the ball like you can in the other games. Finally, you can press B to initiate a pickoff move.

You can choose the field that favors your abilities.

The developers managed to set this game around yet another defensive perspective, this time putting the camera out in center field. Logically this makes sense, as now batting, pitching, and defense are all oriented the same way toward home plate, but this is uncommon compared to other baseball games of the time. The controls for choosing a base to throw or run to also reflects this perspective. Press Up to target home, Left for first base, Down for second base, and Right for third base. Another tweak the manual calls out is that the speed of the throw is determined by how quickly you get rid of the ball. As soon as you grab the ball on defense, throw it right away. This gives you the crispest throw, otherwise if you delay even a little bit the throw will be much slower. It’s an interesting timing mechanic. The other controls are the same: Press A and a direction to throw to a particular base, press B and a direction to run to a base.

Batting is made simpler here. The A button swings like usual. This time you can do a level swing, a high swing with Up and A, and a low swing with Down and A. In earlier games you could adjust your swing to reach inside and outside pitches. To do that now, you must position yourself in the batter’s box prior to the pitch. This might seem like a downgrade but this is how it is done in most other NES baseball games. To bunt, press Select. You can cancel a bunt by pressing Select again or pressing A.

Baserunning is much improved this time. They finally standardized the baserunning controls in Bases Loaded 3 to align with other contemporary NES baseball games. To advance a base, press B and the D-pad direction for the base you are heading toward. To go back, press A and the base you want to return to. The directional mapping for the bases is the same as when fielding, from the centerfield perspective. These controls are so much more intuitive to me. To move multiple runners, you have to control them separately. You can even halt the baserunners by holding both A and B together during a play.

With only the shadow in view until the end, it’s tough to place your fielder.

With the controls and other differences out of the way, it’s time to explain the new winning condition. To win the game you’ll need to understand how to score 100 points in the new rating system. To get a rating at all you need to win a game first. Interestingly enough, the rating screen is more a list of your flaws rather than how well you played. You start with the base score of 100, and most of the categories are negative factors that reduce the rating by 3 points for each infraction. You’ll see a count of the number of faults made in each category with the total score at the bottom.

Here are the 13 categories, mostly taken straight from the manual:

1. Making an error
2. Delaying a throw, i.e. making a slow throw
3. Allowing an inside-the-park home run
4. Throwing to an unmanned base
5. Forcing in a run with a walk
6. Leaving a tired pitcher in the game
7. Allowing more than 3 runs in an inning
8. Throwing a wild pitch that allows a runner to advance a base
9. Striking out
10. Getting caught stealing
11. Getting picked off or doubled off a base
12. Making a great play
13. Bonus

A few things stand out to me about this list. The manual claims a few times about playing the perfect game, but by baseball definition, you don’t actually have to play or pitch a perfect game, not even close. You can allow hits and walks, and even runs, and not necessarily be penalized for them. Most of the categories center around playing clean defense. Miscues on defense that are not necessarily errors in an MLB game tend to count against you here. Many of these are pretty straightforward to avoid. By far the hardest to avoid is striking out, this is what burned me the most starting out. For any point-reducing penalty during game play, you’ll hear a set of beeps to indicate that you messed up.

The biggest moment of the game in the 3rd inning.

The final two categories add points to your score. Funny that these are here to help cover up a mistake or two that let you maintain your “perfect” run, but I digress. A great play will add 2 points to your score. These are for very good defensive plays, such as diving for a ball just barely in reach and throwing out the runner at first base. You can’t fake these points by diving after everything unnecessarily, trust me, I tried that. The mysterious Bonus category gives you 1 point, and I have no idea how this works at all. I was just happy to see points there. Note that with these last two categories it is possible to exceed 100 points, but your rating will round down to 100 if that occurs.

The game rating determines which difficulty level of team you’ll play in the next match. Score 90 points or higher, and you’ll face the most difficult Level 5 team. Every 10 point range down from there reduces the difficulty level by 1. Scoring fewer than 60 points, or losing the match outright, will reset you back to playing the Level 1 team. To beat the game, it’s not just enough to get the perfect 100 rating. You need to earn the right to play the Level 5 team by scoring 90 points or more, and then you have to secure a 100 rating against that team to win for good.

This was my first time playing Bases Loaded 3. Just like the others, this is an affordable cart that is not difficult to find, though it is not nearly as ubiquitous as the first two installments. When you do find a cart, it isn’t expensive, about $5-$10. I have had maybe one or two extras of this game during my heavy collecting days.

The math isn’t exactly right but I’ll take it.

I knew going into Bases Loaded 3 that it would be a much quicker play than the other two games I’ve completed, but I was not prepared for just how quickly I would actually finish. These games usually have a bit of a ramp up to get a feel for the batting timing, to learn the tendencies of the opposing defense, to adapt to pitch types, etc. That ramp up also means that I’ll lose a few of the first few games before I catch my stride. This time was special because none of that really happened. The first game I won with a rating in the 80s, good enough to face the Level 4 team. In the second game, I won and got the perfect 100 rating. That earned me an audience with the Level 5 team, which I beat and got another 100 rating. Victory after only three matches!

The only bad part of it was that I didn’t capture video of the entire playthrough. I realized part way through the first game that I didn’t start the recording. At the time, I assumed it wouldn’t be a big deal because certainly I would lose a match and have to start all over anyway. To try and fix the issue, initially I intended on recording a brand new full playthrough, hoping to replicate my success from the first time. On the first game of the replay, I got a similar enough rating to get from Level 1 to Level 4, just like I did on the winning run. I decided then to call it, and so for my final video I stitched the replay of the first game together with the final two games of the winning run. There are probably some continuity errors at that split point as far as the video goes, but I’m not bothered by it. Getting the full final game with the 100 rating against the Level 5 team to finish it is really all that is needed for proof anyway. I just want to be obsessively open with my process in all this!

The developers did some good work with the tweaks they made from the prior games. I appreciate the upgrade to the baserunning controls and simplifying the batting and pitching. The outfield defensive perspective is not the greatest, but it works fine. I wish the viewpoint was zoomed out more than it is. It makes it more challenging to get your fielder in the right spot, particularly in the outfield, when you can’t see the fielder you’re controlling until the ball gets close enough. But also, I had no real trouble finishing this game, so perhaps it is fine the way it is. Bases Loaded 3 is a solid NES baseball game. I’m not saying this is an essential game that you need to play, but if you appreciate a different style of challenge in sports games, then I think this is worth trying out.

#177 – Bases Loaded 3

The second season went more smoothly than the first.

The logo flashes, that’s as exciting as you can get!

To Beat: Win the World Series
Played: 11/11/19 – 12/12/19
Difficulty: 3/10
My Difficulty: 3/10
My Video: Bases Loaded II World Series and Ending

Uh oh, here we go again!  The first Bases Loaded was a very easy game that took a really long time to beat, solely because you are required to grind through a full season to get the ending.  Bases Loaded II: Second Season has a similar requirement to the original.  I’m not sure to what end the developers were able to take feedback from the first game to apply it to the second, but I did notice differences between the games that made the entire playthrough of Bases Loaded II more streamlined.  Despite the improvements, this is still a long season and another game to grind.

For more information about this series, check out my review of the original Bases Loaded.  In this review I will be focusing mostly on the changes made to this game.

Bases Loaded II: Second Season was first released on the Famicom.  In Japan the game is called Moero!! Pro Yakyuu ’88 Kettei Ban, which translates to Burn!! Pro Baseball ’88 Decision Version.  The game was developed by Tose and published by Jaleco, releasing in Japan in August 1988.  The NES release in North America was delayed until February 1990.

The first differences are notable before even starting the game.  The title screen contains Start for a new game or season and Continue to resume an existing season.  When starting a new game, you will first decide if this is a 1 or 2 player game.  A single player game always begins a season even if you just want to play one game.  First choose either the Eastern or Western division, then select a team and the opposing team.  For a two player game, you first choose a calendar date sometime from 1989-1993 (I guess they didn’t expect people to be playing this game now), then each player selects any team.  The teams in this game are the same one from the first game with half of the teams in the Western Division and the other half in the Eastern Division.  Teams only play against teams in the same division in the season mode.  The Continue option first prompts you for a password which is in the same format as the first game.  The character entry is slightly changed in that each character has a scrolling animation when moving to the next character.  This is the kind of design decision that infuriates me.  This game is long enough, why lengthen it even a little with unnecessary animation on password entry?  Before starting each game, you have the option to modify the lineup.  The Player Change option substitutes bench players into the lineup, while Line Up rearranges the order of the lineup.  Choose Play Ball to start the game!

Let’s get it started.

The pitching controls are the same: Hold a direction and press A to choose a pitch, hold a direction while winding up to set direction, and press directions while the pitch is moving to adjust it mid-flight.  In this game you cannot adjust the pitcher’s position on the mound prior to the pitch.  The manual has a chart with some detail pitching stats.  Each player’s ERA is listed, top speed in MPH, which role they play, i.e. starter or reliever, and curve ball ability separated by vertical curve, left curve, and right curve.  Curveball scores are from 0-15, which mean 0 being no curve and 15 as maximum curve.  These metrics are not listed in-game (aside from ERA) but are useful to know.

Fielding has a couple of differences.  First is that you can now dive for a ball by pressing B.  Just B alone makes your fielder jump, and B with a direction dives in that direction.  The jumps and dives only work when you are close to the ball.  The other, more significant change is that there are two fielding views.  The first game has the view from up above behind home plate while the second game has views from above both the first base and third base dugouts.  When the home team is batting, the view is behind first base, otherwise it is from behind third base.  This is a very strange decision.  You can plan ahead if you think about it, but I just adapted from game to game. Due to the perspective, I found right field defense tough from the first base view and left field defense difficult from the third base angle.

Hitting has one minor tweak and one hidden feature I discovered.  In the last game you bunt by pressing B before the windup.  This time all batting is done by the A button, so to bunt you tap A to prepare the bunt before the pitch or you do a very quick half swing when the pitch arrives at home plate.  When you set up the bunt early you can aim the bat with the D-pad just like in the original Bases Loaded.  There is an advanced hitting technique I discovered very late in the season that may have been present in the first game, I’m not sure.  There are nine hitting zones you can target with the D-pad, either low, middle, or high combined with left, middle, or right.  As you are swinging in one of those zones, you can shift the D-pad direction to sort of swipe the bat in between those nine zones.  You have to swing toward one of the nine zones with A and then immediately after press a nearby D-pad direction.  It’s tough to explain, hopefully that was sufficient. Sometimes pitchers will throw pitches in between the standard bat zones and they are nearly impossible to hit unless you aim in between zones.

The sweet swing of a game-winning home run is magical.

Baserunning is exactly the same between the two games from what I noticed.  It retains the strange convention where the D-pad direction is the base either behind you or where you are standing.  While holding the direction, you press A to retreat or B to advance.  I didn’t really grasp it the first time around, despite the long season, but I got it this time.

The biggest difference in Bases Loaded II is the introduction of the biorhythm system.  This mechanic attempts to simulate streaks and slumps over the course of a long season.  There are three ratings, physical, sensitivity, and intellectual, that are rated with a score from -8 to +8 for each player.  There are in-game charts of these three ratings for each player that are displayed either after the game for the entire lineup, for a relief pitcher, or a pinch hitter.  Charts are color coded with red for physical, blue for sensitivity, and white for intellectual.  Each space on the grid on the x-axis represents a single game, while each mark on the y-axis represents a point of the stat.  The bottom of the screen shows the actual values of those stats for the next game.  Curvy lines are animated on the grid for each of the three stats going out the next 20-30 games.  When two or all three of those lines come together at the top of the chart, you know that player is going to be a major force for a few games.

The biorhythm ratings mean different things for pitchers and hitters.  The pitcher physical stat relates to stamina and for how long the pitcher can both control his pitches and throw them at a high speed.  Pitcher sensitivity is the adrenaline level and affects how fast pitches are thrown.  The pitcher intellectual rating influences the tightness of the curveball, though it will not suddenly give a curveball to a pitcher whom does not already have one.  The hitter physical stat correlates to getting base hits.  A hitter with a high physical rating will tend to get base hits more easily.  Hitting sensitivity is for power and how far a ball can be hit.  The hitter intellectual rating is for clutch hitting and the ability to get hits with runners in scoring position.  As these stats fluctuate game per game, they determine how well a player will perform in relation to his natural abilities.

It’s a long season and you can see these stats far out.

To beat this game, first you need to win 75 games out of a 130-game season.  This requirement is similar to the first game’s winning condition of 80 games out of 132.  This time, when you win 75 games, you have won the pennant in your division and you get to face off against the winning team from the other division in the World Series.  The opposing Western Division champ is Los Angeles and the opposing Eastern Division champ is New York.  The World Series is a best-of-7 series against one of those two teams.  If you win four of those games, then you win the season and beat the game.  So, you need 79 totals wins, one less than the 80 in the first game.

I had never beaten this game before, but I had a much quicker time finishing the season off in the second game than I did in the first game.  One major contributor was that the pace of play was greatly increased.  Minor actions like throwing pitches back to the pitcher that were very slow in the first game, while still present, take place faster here.  There are a few small tweaks like this that add up to a lot of time savings per game.  In Bases Loaded, games took 25-30 minutes, while in Bases Loaded II matchups lasted closer to 20 minutes each.  Perhaps my favorite new feature in this game is a mercy rule.  If a team is leading by 9 or more runs after at least 5 innings, the leading team wins automatically.  Games won by the mercy rule, if finished optimally, could run closer to 15 minutes total.  I won enough games by the mercy rule to reduce my total game time by a few hours over playing the full 9 innings every game.  I estimate I was able to complete this game in about 25-30 hours as opposed to 40 hours in the first game.  It is still a long, repetitive game, but it was a significantly improved experience.

For my playthrough of the game, my team was Kansas of the Western Division.  The manual has all the stats you need to compare the teams, and Kansas stood out to me for a few reasons.  They have two players appearing in the short list of best players in the league.  Yu is second best in homers and third best in average in the league, while Binder is third best in homers.  (It helped too that the Chicago Cubs have Yu Darvish pitching for them now, who is an incredible pitcher!)  I also wanted to find a pitcher with modest curving ability in all directions.  The pitcher May on the Kansas squad fits the bill for that.  I considered picking Omaha again like I did in the first game, but their team is uninspiring on the stats sheet and none of the same players from the first game show up at all.

In the original game, pitching was so consistent that I was able to figure out a super pitch that the opponent could do nothing with.  I spent a lot of time messing around with the pitching to try and find this game’s version of a super pitch, but sorry to say I did not find one.  I had hoped May would be able to find that sweet spot with his modest curve and throw balls into a dead zone consistently, but it just didn’t pan out.  I had to be more creative in finding exploits for this game.

With a big lead, I sometimes throw down the middle.

For pitching, I eventually settled on throwing fastballs fading slightly down and right.  I wanted to induce groundballs where possible.  I ended up allowing mostly fieldable balls in play, a few strikeouts, some hits, and the occasional home run.  The best exploit I found was my ability to pick runners off base.  With a runner on first, I would do a pickoff throw to second base and have the shortstop run the wrong way toward left field.  Go far enough and the runner will take off toward second.  When the runner reached about two-thirds of the way to second, I would throw to second to get the runner to go back toward first, then I would throw to first to get the runner caught in a rundown.  I would usually make the out at second base as baserunners are slower to take a base than to retreat to their previous base.  If that failed, sometimes throwing a ball home or to first with a runner on second got him to leave his base.  I had a few backup pickoff strategies that mostly worked out.

There is another pitching strategy applicable to this game that also applied to the first game that I forgot to mention in that review.  It has to do with pitcher rest in between games.  Normally, starting pitchers cannot be used for a few games after they have pitched in a game.  The password only tracks wins and losses for your team, so all you have to do is reset the game and apply the latest password, and then you can use whatever pitchers you want in any game.  If you play multiple games per session without resetting, then you have to deal with pitcher rest.  This was much more important in the first game where I needed to constantly use my pitchers with the super pitch.  In this game, I mostly rotated between three starting pitchers.  May was my preferred pitcher, and Holler was really good too.  I used Anders occasionally, but I may have been better off skipping him more often.  In a few cases, I used Antman in relief because he has a decent ERA and a marvelous name.

On the hitting side, I had to play things straight for the most part.  Just put the ball into play and hope for the best.  Watch the opposing catcher’s glove during the pitch to determine where to aim your bat and try to make contact.  I got pretty decent at the timing for stealing bases and with a good baserunner I could take second base easily.  Another minor trick I picked up was with a runner on third, I could distract the fielders into throwing home to get batters to reach either first or second base.  Otherwise, the computer-controlled defense was very good.  Most of the times I got caught in a rundown ended with me getting called out on the bases.  The opponent’s pitching was really feast or famine.  Many pitchers just throw hittable junk near the middle of the plate and often I could score a lot in those games.  A few pitchers found the unhittable zone I was hoping to find when I was pitching.  It was most of the way through the season before I figured out I could put the bat in that zone with just the right touch and hit those pitchers too.  I suppose the opposing batters already could do that when I was pitching.

This resulted in the final out of a winning season!

Over a full season, there were various events I took note of.  My season record at the end was 79-5.  Somehow, I won the very first game I played, I’m not sure how that happened but it did.  I lost the next three games, then I won a game, then I lost another game.  With a 2-4 record, I went 77-1 the rest of the way to finish off the season.  My first mercy rule win came in Game #13, a 9-0 victory after 7 innings.  The next game I hit a grand slam to win 12-1 after 6 innings.  I won 25 games total by the mercy rule, about a third of my total wins.  Two games ended in a tie after 12 innings and I was credited with a win in both.  Game #29 was a walkoff win 1-0.  In Game #44, down 1-0 in the 9th, Norton hit a 3-run homer to win that one for Kansas.  Yu bailed me out with a late two-run homer in a 2-1 win in Game #57.  Every player in my lineup hit at least one home run in the season.  Yu didn’t turn out to be near the offensive powerhouse I expected.  He didn’t hit his first home run until Game #37.  He did have a 3-game stretch where he hit 5 homers.  Saigun had a major hot stretch at one point.  He had a 3-homer game and hit 3 grand slams within a 6-game stretch.  The World Series ended up being a complete joke.  I won 10-0, 9-0, 9-0, and 5-0.  All four games combined were completed in just over an hour, which was easily the quickest stretch of games I played in the whole season.

You might be wondering about what exactly happened in the one random loss I had in the season, and it is so dumb that I have to tell the story here.  It happened in Game #71, breaking a 64-game winning streak.  Once I got good, I still knew that I was susceptible to a loss at any time.  I was vulnerable to the solo home run and any lapses in defense.  I had a few near misses along the way.  Therefore, it wasn’t necessarily a surprise, but frankly it was upsetting that it happened at all, especially so close to the end of the season where a loss feels like a huge waste of time.  What happened was I ran into a hot team.  Two opposing players were knocking the cover off the ball hitting long fly ball outs and some solo home runs.  The game prior I won 6-4, allowing 4 solo homers.  In this game, I had a 3-1 lead in the 9th when things unraveled, but not in the way you are expecting.  I was getting sleepy and nodding off a little in this game.  I had a runner reach second base, and sometimes you just cannot get him to move off the base on a pickoff attempt, which is what happened here.  A base hit scored him, and then more bad defense brought that runner around to tie up the game.  I woke up then and pushed the game into extras.  I made it to the 11th inning still tied 3-3 in fear of a game ending solo homer.  One of the hot batters stepped up to the plate, and I figured he was gonna go deep.  That’s when I had a revelation.  Why don’t I throw pitches way off the plate to walk him intentionally, then pick him off the bases?  It was so obvious I was surprised it took me that long to think of it.  The next pitch I tried to throw something different.  Maybe I was still tired and my thoughts didn’t translate down into my fingers because I threw a meatball right down the middle that sailed over the fence for the game-ending home run.  I went to bed sad after that loss.  At least it made for a good story!

I thought Bases Loaded II: Second Season was a major improvement over the first game with a few issues.  The pace of play is increased to a more sensible level, making for more engaging gameplay.  The graphics aren’t changed too much from the first game, but they are pretty good.  I like the pitching windup animations, and bunting, though mostly unused, had really smooth animation too.  The music is just okay, nothing memorable to me.  There is good variety in control in both pitching and hitting and everything responds appropriately.  The only minor issues were the timing when you can dive on defense and the silly baserunning controls carried over from the first game.  A gameplay nitpick is the unnecessary view shift on defense, as it is disorienting when suddenly in the next game you might see the field from the opposite angle.  The hitting perspective, while nice to look at, still takes some getting used to.  The second game was a little more difficult to win, but it was still pretty easy overall.  The glitches I found from Bases Loaded were all cleared up in the second game.  While it has a few new issues, this was the better game by far, though that doesn’t mean I ever want to play it again.

#141 – Bases Loaded II: Second Season

Possibly the most detailed and comprehensive NES baseball game.

Pronounced “one thousand,” not “one dot oh oh oh.”

To Beat: Win a season
What I Did: Went undefeated in a short season in the Ultra League
Played: 10/15/18 – 10/20/18
Difficulty: 1/10
My Difficulty: 3/10
My Video: Baseball Simulator 1.000 Final Game

There are so many baseball games on the NES that each one should have something interesting or unique to offer. At least, I would hope that’s true. R.B.I. Baseball is always the nostalgic choice for all the good memories I’ve had playing games with friends. Bases Loaded emulates the grind of a long season. Baseball Simulator 1.000 hits along both of those lines but dials it up even further in a few different ways. While I did not spend a huge amount of time playing Baseball Simulator 1.000, it is definitely in the running for my new favorite NES baseball game.

Baseball Simulator 1.000 was developed and published by Culture Brain. The Famicom version was first, releasing in October 1989 under the name Choujin Ultra Baseball. The NES version came out in March 1990. There are several other games in this series, all on Super Famicom. The only other game to get a US release was Super Baseball Simulator 1.000 for SNES in 1991. In Japan it is known as Super Ultra Baseball. A direct sequel on Super Famicom was released in 1994. The other three games were Japan-only baseball games named Ultra Baseball Jitsumeiban. These games have the same structure as the others but include licensed rosters from the Japan’s NPB league.

Baseball Simulator 1.000 has several game modes with a wide variety of configuration options. You can play a simple exhibition game by yourself or with a friend, or you can play a full season. There are three leagues of teams to choose from for playing a season, one of which is the Ultra league where players have super skills that can be strategically deployed. You can create your own teams or even your own league. In season play, statistics are calculated for the duration of the season. Things like batting average, home runs, and ERA are tabulated and you can see how your players stack up with the rest of the league. To beat the game, simply be the league champion at the end of a season.

Lots of stats in this one!

The first menu screen presents you with five options that do a pretty good job of outlining what features to expect in the game. Exhibition mode lets you play a simple game. You can play this game with either one or two players. In single player this is just one game, but for two players you can also choose to play a best-of-seven series. Season mode is the primary mode in the game. You can choose the number of games you’ll play in the season from either 5, 30, 60, or a whopping 165 games. Season play is contained in one league of six teams all vying for the best record. Edit mode lets you take an existing team and edit it in many ways to create a brand new team. In the New League option, you can take any six teams you want in the game and combine them together into a new league that you can play in the Season mode. Finally, if you just want to sit back and watch the computer go at it, you can select Watch and just watch a game.

The in-game controls are largely the same as in R.B.I. Baseball, so I recommend reading my review there if you want more detail. I’ll cover the highlights. Batting and baserunning I believe is exactly the game. You can move your batter around the batter’s box with the D-pad and press A to swing the bat, tapping A to bunt. While baserunning, the D-pad points to whichever base you want. Press B with a base direction to advance a runner and use A instead to go back.

On defense, you both pitch and play the field. For pitching, you can move the pitcher left or right prior to starting the pitch with A. You can use the D-pad to influence the direction and movement of the pitch both prior to the pitch and when the pitch is on the way to the plate. A quirk about this game is the “pinch” indicator which sometimes turns on during a crucial plate appearance. The pitcher will start to sweat and can have an effect on his performance, either positively or negatively at random. On defense, you control most of the fielders at the same time, but more specifically the ones closest to where the ball is headed. Move on top of the ball to grab it, then press A and a direction to throw the ball to that base. Press B and a direction to run the ball there yourself. In this game, you can press A to jump or dive for a ball that is just out of reach.

Get a view of some fielding stats and make adjustments.

You can do player substitutions. Before a pitcher winds up, either team can press Start to call time. While batting, you can choose a pinch hitter. He will play the field wherever you sub him, no problem. Well, unless you are hitting for a pitcher, in which case both pinch hitter and pitcher are out of the game and you must choose a new relief pitcher after the half inning. On defense, you can sub out either the pitcher or any fielder. This brings up a view of the entire field with a small table for each player. Select a player, then choose Change from the box on the lower right. One thing you cannot do is swap two fielders already in the lineup; you must sub in a brand new player. If you choose a player and select Move, you can shift the fielder to just about any position on the field you want no matter what position they currently play. So, for example, if you know the batter will probably hit the ball to right field, you can move several fielders out there for a better chance of making a play. The custom fielding positions reset back to default after that batter is finished. There are a few limitations. You cannot move either the pitcher or the catcher, you can’t put a fielder in between the pitcher and catcher, and you can’t put a fielder in foul territory.

The main feature that sets this baseball game apart is included in the Ultra League. In this league, pitchers can use Ultra Pitches, batters can perform Ultra Hitting, and fielders can do Ultra Fielding. These are special, supercharged moves that can really swing the game in an instant. Each team in the Ultra League has a set number of Ultra Points for each game played, and performing an Ultra Play requires spending some of those points. Ultra Pitchers and Ultra Hitting costs 3 points each, while an Ultra Fielding play costs 5 points. To choose an Ultra Pitch, press Up twice before the windup. You will see an icon appear next to the pitcher. Then press Up or Down to choose the Ultra Pitch you want. While batting, press B to show the Ultra Hitting icon, then swing normally with A to use it. To perform an Ultra Fielding move, press B while the fielder is near the ball.

The Ultra moves can be intense

The Ultra moves themselves are fun to use with a wide variety of interesting effects. There are pitches with all sorts of movement, including a snaking pitch and a super fastball. You can throw a stop ball that freezes on the way to the plate by pressing A. You can throw a pitch that splits up into many balls. There’s a pitch that disappears on the way to the batter, and another that is a heavy ball that the batter has to hit just right to put it into play. On the hitting side, you can simply do an Ultra move that hits the ball with more power. There’s a hit that casts multiple shadows on the ground so it’s tougher to see where the ball will land. There’s a hit that spins the ball off in a drastically different direction when it hits the ground. There’s a missile hit that pushes the fielder back far, sometimes even through the outfield wall. For fielding, you can jump super high or do a super dive. You can also throw the ball extra fast to help catch a runner between bases. This isn’t a full list, but a good summary of the kinds of things you can do in the Ultra League.

There are six different stadiums in the game. You can pick which one you want to play in an exhibition game, or in a season you can assign each of the six teams to any stadium you want as their home field. The stadiums have different dimensions and characteristics, just like baseball stadiums in professional leagues. One stadium that stands out from the rest is the space stadium. Graphically it is unique, but here there is less gravity so the ball can really carry. It’s possible to hit some long homeruns, especially in the Ultra League.

Baseball Simulator 1.000 features a full Edit mode where you can build a team. To start, you must pick one of the eighteen built-in teams as a base. When creating an Ultra team, you have to use one of the existing Ultra teams as a base. You also can’t have the original team and the edited version of that team in the same league together. Other than that, there’s a lot you can change. You can rename the team and any of the players. You get to distribute both batting stats and pitching stats. You can a base amount for the entire team in each category and you can distribute those points as you see fit. You can edit things like their contact ability, power, running speed, position on the field, and fielding ability. For pitchers, you can choose if he is left or right handed, pitching speed, stamina, and strength of breaking pitches. Pitchers all have the same, weak hitting stats that cannot be changed. If you are editing an Ultra team, you can also choose and distribute the Ultra moves. You can create up to six new teams altogether.

Good idea to have the ball hit directly to the pitcher.

Season play is also a comprehensive mode. While only one season can be saved at a time, there are many ways you can choose to go through it. For a new season, first select a league. This can be one of the three built-in leagues or the fourth custom league. Then assign home stadiums to each team in the league. Next, choose the season length from either 5, 30, 60, or 165 games. Since there are six teams, each team will play against each of the five other teams the same number of times. For each team, you then select which teams are played automatically by the computer and which ones are played manually by a player. You can play an entire season automatically if you want. The game will generate a schedule of the order of games played and go through them one at a time. If a team is set to Manual, then that game will be played with a player at the helm. If both teams are set to Auto, you can then choose if you want to watch the game or skip it. Skipping a game simulates the contest more quickly than watching the game play out. All stats are kept and calculated from the simulated game.

The season ends whenever a team clinches the league championship. As the season draws to a close, the standings will display the Magic Number. This number is wins by the first place team or losses by the second place team needed to secure the league title. A Magic Number of 0 means that team wins the league no matter how the rest of the games play out. You then see a victory celebration for the winning team. If two or more teams are tied after season play, there will be playoffs to determine the winner. The playoff bracket is set up automatically and are single elimination games. Most likely there will only be two teams tie, so in that case a single game determines league champion.

This was my first time playing through Baseball Simulator 1.000. I do like baseball quite a lot but I’m not so interested in baseball video games, so this has sat on my shelf for some time. This is the first game with a battery backup I’ve played in a little while, and thankfully my battery was still good. I probably picked this game up in a lot of games for next to nothing. A cart-only copy costs around $6, so it’s quite affordable for baseball fans.

This poor fielder is getting knocked into the wall by an Ultra hit.

I figured that if I’m going to play this game, I might as well play in the Ultra League to check out the enhanced features. The ending is the same no matter what. I also decided on a short, five-game season. A friend of mine suggested I play with the team called Heroes, which is the team with the icon of a smiling baseball abbreviated HE. (You can read his review of the game.) This team is likely the best team in the game for a few reasons. The team has the most Ultra points of any team in the league. The starting pitching is very strong and each pitcher can last several innings. This team also has two players that are borderline ludicrous. The leadoff hitter, Boyd, is the fastest player in the game easily. Anything hit on the ground is a guaranteed hit, and usually more. In one game, using an Ultra Hit, I performed an unheard-of infield inside-the-park home run. Yes, he’s that fast. The fifth hitter, Bret, has some of the best power in the game. When combined with Ultra Hitting, you should mostly hit home runs with him. I only hit nine homers with him in five games since I was a bit conservative with spending Ultra points, although he did have one four-homer game.

I went undefeated in a short season and all the games but one were blowouts. This game has the same rule from R.B.I. Baseball where games are called if one team is winning by 10 or more after any inning. The first four games went as follows: A 12-2 win in 5 innings, a 15-1 win in 6 innings, another 12-2 win in 7 innings, and a 14-0 shutout in only 3 innings. I hit nine home runs in both the first and fourth games. Game 2 was the four-homer game by Bret, and Game 4 was played in the space stadium which explains all the home runs there. The fifth and final game of the season was the biggest test by. Both teams were undefeated so it functioned the same as a one-game playoff for the title. I played a full 9 inning game and won 7-4. It got a little scary at the end because I gave up a three-run homer in the bottom of the 9th and they had the tying run at the plate. I just barely held on. That team had really good pitching and they messed up my rhythm. I also played conservatively with the Ultra moves the entire season. I rarely used Ultra Pitches or Ultra Fielding, spending most of my points on Ultra Hitting. Even then, I mostly utilized Ultra Hitting when I had runners on base. The idea was to keep the rally going or go for the big home run. I had an easy time with the game up until that final game, but it still wasn’t too tough.

Sponsored by Kung-Fu Heroes

Baseball Simulator gets a 1/10 difficulty because you can trigger the ending without playing a single game. You are allowed to play a full season with every game played automatically. The winner of the league gets the victory screen no matter who it is. I know this is true because I played out a separate 5-game season automatically, just to make sure. I’m sure you can see the same ending screens if you play a full season and don’t win. The end of my winning season and the end of the simulated season were both completely identical from what I could tell. If you are going to play the game at all, then you might as well try to win it, but here you can lose and just tell people you won, and they would be none the wiser. I try to go about it honestly. The game gets a 3/10 from me because I made the effort to win and it wasn’t too challenging in the Ultra League.

It’s a little early to say, but I think Baseball Simulator 1.000 might well be the best baseball game on the NES. If not, it’s certainly one that is overlooked. The gameplay is rock solid and easy to play. The graphics and music are nice. The controls work well. What sets this game apart is the huge number of features for such a game, such as custom teams, custom league, the Ultra League, statistics tracking, and full season play. I think the Ultra League is the real draw here as you can spice up the gameplay dramatically. Hitting a home run off a tough pitch or spoiling an Ultra Hit with a great play is very satisfying. The only thing I don’t like about the game is how long it takes to simulate unplayed games in a season. Even when skipping a game, it takes about five minutes of real time for it to play out entirely. All you are left to do is watch the scoreboard for updates and twiddle your thumbs. Or look at your phone like I did. I suppose that is the price to pay for tracking every pitch, every hit, and every out, all with cumulative statistics. I did not expect to get all of this out of an NES baseball game, but I’m happy I did.

#103 – Baseball Simulator 1.000

Better hope you are loaded with free time!

The music is upbeat, at least!

To Beat: Win 80 Games
Played: 1/2/17 – 3/1/17
Difficulty: 2/10
My Difficulty: 2/10
Video: Bases Loaded Final Game and Ending

Bases Loaded is a game that has a reputation for being a very long game, which I can now confirm to be true. I am not the biggest fan of sports video games, so this is exactly the type of game that I wanted to avoid playing if I could. I originally came up with the idea in my Methodology to shuffle undesirable games like this to the end of the list and most likely skip them altogether. I have since had a change of heart and decided that if I really want to beat all the NES games, I shouldn’t make excuses against any game at all. So occasionally I will be pulling a game off the top of my “snub list” and playing that one instead. Bases Loaded is the first game off of that list, and actually it came at a good time because I had been building a large backlog of game posts and needed a long game to help me catch up with writing.

Bases Loaded is known in Japan as Moero!! Pro Yakyuu and was originally an arcade title in Japan only in 1987. It was published and developed by Jaleco. That same year the game was ported to Famicom by the developer Tose, and it was brought to the NES in 1988. A Game Boy port was released in 1990. Bases Loaded had several other installments. In all there are four NES games, three SNES games called Super Bases Loaded, and Bases Loaded ’96: Double Header for the Sega Saturn and Playstation. The original Bases Loaded was also released for Virtual Console on the Wii, 3DS, and Wii U, all in both Japan and North America.

When you start the game you choose from either Pennant mode or Vs. Mode. Pennant mode is the single player game and Vs. Mode is for a two-player game. If you select Pennant mode you are brought immediately to the password screen where you may continue your game. If you leave the password as the default or enter the wrong password, the game assumes you are playing a new season. You get to pick your team from the 12 teams in the league. In two player mode both players will choose their team. From there you go right into a baseball game!

I spent a lot of hours looking at this screen.

The pitching perspective is similar to how baseball games are shown on TV. You see the pitcher from behind looking toward the batter and catcher at home plate. Before throwing a pitch, you can tap Left or Right on the D-Pad to position the pitcher where you want him on the mound. To throw a pitch you press A while pressing directions on the D-Pad to choose your pitch. You can throw a fastball by holding Up or a breaking ball by holding Down before you throw. You can also hold Left or Right to target one side of the plate if you choose, and you can hold diagonal directions for both pitch type and direction. As the pitcher winds up to throw, you can then hold down any direction on the D-Pad to curve the pitch toward that direction. The breaking pitches are slower in speed than the fastball but have more curve as they approach home plate. The two step process of pitching allows you to throw many different types of pitches. Also, if there is a runner on base, you can press B and the direction of the base before throwing to do a pickoff move to try and get the runner out. Here, Right represents first base, Up represents second base, and Left represents third base. I never used this because I couldn’t figure out the timing for the pickoff.

When a batter puts a ball into play, the perspective shifts to an overhead view. You take control of the fielder that is closest to the ball. Use the D-Pad to move your fielder in any direction. You pick up the ball whenever you come in contact with it, and from there you the throw the ball by holding the D-Pad at the base you want and pressing A. Throws automatically go to first base if no direction is held. Any subsequent defender with the ball can run and throw to bases in the same way. If you don’t press anything at all when the ball is put into play, the fielders will automatically run toward the ball which is a nice touch. They will usually end up catching weak fly balls for you in the outfield. If the ball gets past an outfielder then it is best to take matters into your own hands.

The batting uses the same perspective as the pitching. You press A to swing at the pitch. As you swing you can hold down a direction on the D-Pad to swing toward a specific area. For instance, hold Up to swing high or Down to swing low. You can also swing toward the left or right and also in the middle by not pressing anything. Essentially you have to aim your swing toward the pitch right before the catcher grabs it if you want to make contact. If you want to bunt, press B before the pitcher starts his delivery to go into the bunting stance. When bunting you use the D-Pad to move the bat around to try and bunt it. You can also attempt to steal bases if you have a runner on by pressing B and the direction for the base during the pitcher’s windup.

It’s fun juggling several baserunners when you get a base hit like this.

Baserunning takes place from the overhead view. You press B and a direction to advance that runner ahead a base or press A and a direction to go back toward a base. You can move all the runners by pressing Down and either A to move them back or B to move them ahead. I found this a little confusing so here’s an example to explain how it works. If you have a runner either at first base or between first and second, you use Right on the D-Pad to control that runner. Hold Right and press B to move the runner toward second, or press Right and A to move the runner toward first. I am very used to the R.B.I. Baseball style of A plus direction to retreat to a base and B plus direction to advance to that base, and I never really did get used to the different method here.

You can choose to bring in a new pitcher or a pinch hitter. While pitching or batting, press Start to call timeout and press A to bring up the scoreboard. You can choose a new pitcher or batter by selecting his number on the board and pressing A, or you can change your mind with B. If you bring in a pinch hitter, sometimes you have to make an additional substitution before going back to defense if the new hitter does not play the same position as the player you replaced. Each pinch hitter is assigned either as an infielder, outfielder, or catcher, but you can’t tell which one they are. Also, the game will not allow you to pinch hit for a batter if there are no available players at that position. You have to keep track on your own as you play to figure out which positions your best pinch hitters play.

Each player in the game has a name as well as some basic statistics. Batters have a batting average and home run total displayed on the scoreboard before batting. You can see the ERA of the pitcher chosen as well when brought into the game. The home run numbers tend to mirror well with batter power and the pitchers with lower ERA can have more curve to their pitches, but this isn’t always true. It takes some playing to figure out who is more useful to the team.

When you finish a game you get a password. These are 7 characters long with only uppercase letters, so they are easy to manage. The passwords contain the number of games you have played along with your number of wins and the team you will play next.

Not looking too good for the outfielder.

Bases Loaded is one of the sports games on the system that requires you to play a full season of games to get the ending. The season consists of 132 games but you can end it early if you win 80 games. I believe this is the only way to get the ending, but I am not about to play 132 games just to see what happens.

This was my first and likely only time playing through Bases Loaded. It is a very common cart that shows up all the time and it’s cheap. As of this writing I have somewhere between 8-10 copies of the game because it is that common and that hard to get rid of short of giving them away. I bet that most NES collectors got this game early on.

When I started the game I picked Omaha as my team. There were quite a few teams in this game where there is not a real-life MLB team in the same city, and Omaha stood out to me. That team is not one of the good teams in the game, and so the beginning of my season got off to a rough start. As usual it takes some time to get accustomed to the gameplay. I have played a few baseball games on the NES but none from the behind-the-pitcher perspective. It made pitching and hitting different which meant it took me longer to get the hang of the game. My first few games ended up closer than I thought they would, but I fell short. The fourth game I played was my first win and then I lost the next, starting off the season with a 1-4 record. That’s when I figured out The Exploit.

One thing the game has going for it is that the pitching is consistent. I am used to games where you have control over the ball in-flight, but here the path of the pitch is already determined when it leaves the pitchers hand. I took advantage of this mechanic. There is a certain spot the pitcher can throw the ball where it is always called a strike if the batter doesn’t swing, and the batter will always miss if he does. Once you figure this out, you can consistently throw strikeouts and the batters will never make contact with the ball.

This is the magic spot for infinite strikeouts!

Not every pitcher has the capability of throwing this super pitch, so you have to find one who does. For Omaha, the pitcher I relied on the most was Foot. Strange name for a pitcher, I know. Here is my exact technique. Hold Down and Left and press A to start the pitch, then hold Down and Right before letting go of the ball. This starts the pitch on the left side and fades it over to the bottom right for a strike every single time. Now this doesn’t last for long. Pitchers get tired the longer they are in the game and at that point the pitch is no longer effective. It takes Foot 40 pitches to get tired, meaning he can get me to the 5th inning with one out and one strike if I execute perfectly. The good news is I can take advantage of his tired state to throw another super pitch. This time just hold Down, press A, then hold Right. A left-handed batter will sometimes have this pitch called a ball, so to compensate I have to slide the pitcher over to the left one tiny step before executing the pitch. This works for another 30 pitches which gets me to the 8th inning. Then I change pitchers over to Waters who can throw the same pitch as Foot does when he gets tired. Between the two of them I can cover more than 9 innings without the other team scoring anything. Armed with this knowledge I won the next 79 games in a row to end my season at 80-4.

With the defensive side completely solved by pitching, there’s not much to worry about on offense. My strategy consisted of scoring one run and then making outs as quickly as I can. For the most part, I decided to swing away at every pitch just to put the ball into play. Sometimes I would make an out the normal way, other times I would get a hit and purposefully get thrown out at first or second, and occasionally I would hit a home run. The homers may be counterproductive, but they are fun!

My lineup was not particularly good but they got the job done. Far and away my best hitter was the number four hitter Lyonse. His stats showed 25 home run power but he probably hit 50-60 for me. He would hit the ball hard almost every time he batted. The rest of the lineup power wise was remarkably consistent. Each other player with the exception of the pitcher had 5-10 homers each regardless of their noted totals. I even had the pitcher hit a home run one time, which I couldn’t believe when I saw it!

On that note I had a few other rare moments documented over the course of the season. In one two-game stretch Lyonse hit five straight home runs. In another game, I purposefully stopped myself from scoring to try and hit a walk-off homer in either the 9th inning or extra innings. I went scoreless through 12 innings and then the game suddenly ended in a 0-0 tie but credited me with the win anyway. I couldn’t find that outcome documented anywhere else, so that was a neat tidbit to discover.

I enjoyed running up the score in my final game!

The problem with Bases Loaded is not so much that it demands you play a large number of games, but it’s that the pace of play for each individual game is terribly slow. The pitching in particular is very intentional. The entire pitch from windup to catcher’s mitt is slow. The catcher then slowly throws the ball back to the pitcher to start the next pitch all over again. It takes a long time for the fielding to end when an out is recorded. The scoreboard showing which batter is coming up to the plate is displayed for a long time. There’s no mercy rule like in R.B.I. Baseball so all nine innings need to be played each game. I get that the idea here is to look and feel like a real baseball game, but trying to play through 80 wins with this pace is agonizing especially when the game boils down to simply executing the same plan over and over. When trying to speed through the game like I did it still took 25-30 minutes per game, and that adds up to about 40 hours over the entire season. That’s a lot of time to spend on an old baseball game, but hey, this is what I signed up for when I started this project!

Bases Loaded has a lot of minor glitches too. Sometimes the outfielders will drop routine flyouts. Sometimes an infielder steps out of the way when the ball is thrown at him. Sometimes the defense forgets who is holding the ball and you can circle the bases for a cheap run while the defense does nothing. When a ball is hit to the first baseman, he will run to the bag in a rapid zigzag pattern instead of running straight to the base. One time I saw an umpire standing on top of the crowd past the left field wall. Once I saw two infielders standing on top of each other throwing the ball back and forth instead of toward the intended base. With the long season, it ended up being a breath of fresh air to see some weird things happen like that.

I guess what I’m trying to say here is that there’s really no reason to play Bases Loaded in the single player mode anymore unless you are trying to beat all the games or you are involved in some kind of other larger project. It might be fun for a few games but the whole season is obviously such a drag. The two player mode could still be fun, but I think there are better baseball games on the NES and time is better spent playing them instead.

#46 – Bases Loaded

Crush monster home runs in this quintessential NES baseball game!

Not shown is the giant baseball and corresponding *pling* sound effect at power on.

To Beat: Win 9 Games
Played: 12/29/16 – 12/30/16
Difficulty: 2/10
My Difficulty: 2/10
Video: R.B.I. Baseball Longplay

The NES library holds a large collection of sports games. While Mike Tyson’s Punch Out!! and T&C Surf Designs could be loosely classified as sports games, I feel comfortable saying that today’s game is the first major sports title covered on the blog. There are more baseball games on NES than any other sport. So not only is it fitting that this first sports game is a baseball game, but it also happens to be one that I really enjoy and have spent a lot of time playing over the years.

R.B.I. Baseball is the first in a long series of baseball games developed by Namco for release in Japan. There it is known as Pro Yakyuu Family Stadium. Subsequent games on the Famicom were released yearly spanning 1986 through 1994. The 1989 installment was called Famista as a play on the name Famicom, and the series has been named Famista ever since. R.B.I. Baseball on the NES was released in June 1988 and was published by Tengen. This is one of three licensed NES games published by Tengen. It was also released as an unlicensed black cart version that seems to be much more prevalent than its gray cart equivalent.

The Famista series in Japan would carry on to many other consoles such as the Super Famicom, MSX, and Game Boy, as well as modern versions on the 3DS and Android/iOS. Not related to Famista, the R.B.I. Baseball name would be used in a brand new series developed by Major League Baseball (MLB) themselves in 2014. This separate series has received new entries every year. Also unrelated to both this new series and Famista are two R.B.I. Baseball games on NES. Developed by Atari Games and published by Tengen, R.B.I. Baseball 2 was released in 1990 and R.B.I. Baseball 3 came out in 1991. These games share a similar style as the original game but with all MLB teams and rosters included. They are not officially licensed by Nintendo and so they will not be covered in the main project, though I will probably play and write about them one of these days.

Choose your abbreviation and let’s get started!

R.B.I. Baseball lets you play a typical nine-inning match against either a computer opponent or another human player. When you begin, you get a list of ten teams and you can choose the team you want. The list only consists of two letter abbreviations and only a fraction of the teams are covered. The last two teams in the list are the American League All-Stars and National League All-Stars, and their rosters are comprised of best players not already included within the other eight teams. Once teams are selected, choose from one of four pitchers. Then the game begins!

The gameplay for R.B.I. Baseball breaks down nicely into pitching and fielding on the defensive side, and batting and baserunning on the offensive side. The one common thread between everything is base selection. On the controller, Right represents first base, Up is second base, Left is third base, and Down is home plate. Most baseball games will use this same scheme because it is both sensible and intuitive.

Player 1 is always the away team, meaning he bats first. While batting, the pitcher is shown at the top of the screen and the batter on the bottom. When batting you can position your player anywhere within the batter’s box with the D-Pad. Press the A button to swing the bat. You can hold the button down to do a full swing, and you must press A again to bring your bat back if you swing way too early. If you tap the A button the bat will immediately stop at whichever point it lies during the swing path, and if you get the bat to stop over the plate you can bunt the ball. The B button is used for sending your baserunners on a steal attempt. While the pitcher is winding up to throw, you press B along with the direction of the base you want to steal. For instance, if you have a runner on first base, press B and Up to have the baserunner start running toward second base.

It doesn’t look like it but this is good swing timing.

When a batted ball is put into play, the perspective shifts to an overhead view of the field and now you control the baserunners. Here the A button is used to go back and the B button is used to go ahead, and you combine this with a D-Pad direction to direct a specific runner to the nearest base. This is the same as baserunning while batting. For example, say you hit a ball all the way to the outfield wall. When your batter reaches first base, you can press Up and B to advance the runner to second base. Now if the throw from the outfielder is going to beat you to second base, you can send the runner back to first by pressing Right and A and avoid making an out. As long as the ball is hit fair and the screen remains in fielding mode, you can move runners around as much as you want, though you run the risk of getting tagged out for being careless on the bases.

In the bottom half of the inning you control the pitcher and defense. To pitch, you start by positioning your pitcher on the mound with either Left or Right. Press the A button to start your windup and throw a pitch. If you hold Down with A, you will throw a faster pitch, and if you hold Up with A you will throw a slower pitch. The slow pitch plays a different sound effect than that other pitches and sometimes it will bounce off the ground, causing the batter to swing right over top of it. After the pitch is thrown you can steer it with Left or Right to curve the pitch. Finally, the B button in combination with a D-Pad direction lets you do a pickoff move toward a base.

If the opponent puts a ball into play, then you play defense from the overhead view. Depending on where the ball is hit, the game will automatically give you control of the nearest fielder. Actually, you get to control most fielders simultaneously. Just run your fielder into the ball to pick it up, or you can follow the ball’s shadow if it is hit into the air. Once you have possession of the ball, press A and a direction to throw the ball to the desired base. If you press A without a direction the throw goes to first base which is useful for infield grounders. If you press B with a direction then your fielder will run toward the base with the ball in hand. This is useful for running down baserunners. The game goes back to pitching once the fielder has the ball without any controller movement for a while.

Sometimes you have to make a long throw to get an out.

The team rosters are very simple. As selected at the start, there are only four pitchers per team. The first two pitchers are the starters and the other two are relievers. This is important because the starters maintain their stamina longer than the relievers. Also in consecutive games, the prior game’s starter is unavailable. You can change pitchers in the middle of the game by pressing Start to call timeout while pitching. You can then bring up a menu of available pitchers and get a fresh arm into the game right away. The same goes for hitting if you want to bring in a pinch hitter. Each team has four pinch hitters on the bench and they can be swapped anywhere into the lineup regardless of position. Just like in a real game, if you pinch hit for the pitcher, then you must select a new pitcher at the start of the next half inning.

Players have different attributes that are not always spelled out in the game. For pitchers, you can see their ERA. Typically, the lower the ERA the better the pitcher. What the ERA doesn’t indicate is that some pitchers throw faster, some have better curves, and a few even throw sidearm for a different look. On the hitting side, you can see a hitter’s batting average and home run count. Hitters with high batting averages tend to hit the ball more often in places it can’t be fielded easily, and hitters with high home run totals have more power. The hitters also have different speeds while baserunning with no visible stat to suggest how fast they run. Finding skilled players in certain areas requires trial and error.

Love that 32 home run power!

R.B.I. Baseball was one of the few sports games I had growing up and I played it often. I owned both the unlicensed black cart and the licensed gray cart and those same copies are still in my collection today. This game was particularly popular in college and people would drop in to play matches all the time. I haven’t lost to the CPU in ages but I lost quite a few games in the two player mode. Our preferred house rule was “straight pitch” style where we always threw pitches right down the middle, focusing just on hitting, fielding, and baserunning.

Despite all those years of playing R.B.I. Baseball, it turns out I learned something new about the game when I set out to beat it. I was expecting that I would have to win a single match to consider the game beaten. However, there is a different ending screen if you win nine matches, one against each opponent. The downside to that is that there are no passwords or saving in the game, so you must complete all nine games in a single sitting. The upside is that the game has a mercy rule which can shorten games significantly. If you lead by 10 or more runs at the end of an inning, then you win immediately.

My favorite team in the game is the National League All-Stars, but similar to college it’s not quite fair to play as one of the teams completely stacked with talent. I would have definitely picked my favorite team, the Chicago Cubs, except they aren’t represented in the game at all. So I decided to play as my backup team Detroit. They are a very good offensive team which aligned with my desire to score a bunch of runs to win quickly by the mercy rule. Since I have the game mastered already, it was a breeze to beat all nine teams.

It’s true! Chicks dig the long ball.

Here are some stats about my 9-0 run of the game. I outscored my opponents 112-4, and I allowed all four of those runs in one inning of my first game. Every game I won by the mercy rule and I averaged a little over 5 innings per game. I pitched two separate three inning no-hitters and struck out 90 batters total. I got 145 hits, including 28 home runs, and I only allowed 23 hits. It was a pretty thorough bashing of the other teams, but I expected nothing less!

One interesting tidbit about R.B.I. Baseball is that it is the first console baseball game that uses actual MLB player names. This is because the game is the first baseball game officially licensed by the Major League Baseball Players Association. However, the game is not licensed by MLB, and as a result it cannot include the names of the actual teams. So here you have the names of the players but not the name of the team, leaving only the city names to represent the teams.

It may not be easy to see just looking at the game, but R.B.I. Baseball is a classic title that is still fun to play today. Appearances can be deceiving, since the characters are large, chunky sprites and the movement feels slow. The music, while catchy, can get repetitive over a long play session. What really matters is that R.B.I. Baseball is simple and easy to play. It may be a trimmed down experience, but it is so intuitive and quick to start playing that it has maintained its popularity for all these years. If the formula is good enough for a modern remake, then it is good enough here.

#44 – R.B.I. Baseball