Baseball Stars

On vacation I found myself in a few situations of 20 to 30 minutes of downtime during which I had nothing productive to be doing since...I was on vacation. So I filled that time by downloading an original Nintendo emulator and playing perhaps the best baseball video game of all time, Baseball Stars. I thought of it as my own personal celebration of the game's 20th anniversary.

The game has held up so nicely because it was several years ahead of its time at release in 1989. For one, the game cartridge itself was one of only a handful at the time that had the ability to actually save your data so that you didn't have to start from scratch every time you wanted to play a new game. This meant the game allowed for seasons of 125 games in which 8 teams that could be user or cpu controlled could play and the game would keep several categories of statistics that would update every at-bat and still be there weeks into the season. It was also the first game to allow you to create a team with a name of your choosing or create a player which, for the first (and possibly last) time in video games could also be a girl. Players come with adjustable attributes like hitting, defense, speed, prestige, and luck which could be adjusted with money your team earned by winning games. Luck would determine the percentage of time a ball could be hit a few inches foul only to have the ump turn a blind eye and call it fair. Prestige, when added together between two opposing teams determined how much money you would make for winning the game. In addition to being able to create, the game also came with 8 stock teams to play as or against. Naturally in season-mode you would think to play the team called the Lovely Ladies 25 times to rack up a decent amount of spending cash because it would be easy to beat a team full of girls, but they were not the worst of the stock teams. That distinction belonged to a team called the Brave Warriors. However, beating the Brave Warriors brought in less cash. There was also a stock team called the American Dreams which fielded players named Babe, Dizzy, Hank, Joe, Sandy, and..well you get the point. Beating the American Dreams was tough to do without first beating up on lesser teams and earning enough cash to pump up your team's attributes.

Gameplay was nothing to scoff at either in 1989. Defense was surprisingly robust for an early baseball video game, giving you the ability to control any player on the field. Defensive attributes controlled the speed of your fielder's throws, so, for example, a catcher with poor defense could not easily throw out a base stealer with high amounts of speed. This made for a lot of infield hits when I hired a rookie girl named Ashley to play third base whose Defensive ability was 3/15. Batting for the first time in video games depended not only on timing but positioning too, as home runs could not simply be hit with a well timed swing but instead also demanded you hit the ball with the bat's sweet spot. In the outfield timing also played a role as fielders could attempt wall climbing stabs at potential homerun balls.

To this day I've never completed a full season, but during every attempt I've made since I was 8 I create a team called the Family All-Stars that includes myself and random members of my extended family and try to put them in positions that would somehow suit them if during their prime they were in peak physical condition such that they could compete in a professional baseball game. My Uncle who we call "Bear," for example is a catcher. Currently my bedridden stroke patient great uncle plays 2nd Base and leads the team in steals. My sister, whose in-game persona is called AngrySarah is the closer.