Where would we be without Baseball Stars?

Although the title of Retro Gaming Geek comes along with the expectations of being buried in a non stop avalanche of platforming games and shooters.  The fact is that I do enjoy those games, and many other nerdy type games like strategy games, and I have not even begun to profess my love for RPG's.  However I am a paradox of a gamer, in that I am also a considerable fan of RPG's but I am also a big sports fan.  And while I love going on an epic adventures with my gaming, there is very little denying that some of the NES sports titles were quite innovative and a fun diversion when my adventures got derailed.  The ability to customize characters and statistics has become a universal idea that crosses many different types of game genres.

Many hardcore gamers wont give their time to many sports titles, and for good reason.  Much like the early arcade style games, sports games really only offer repetitive game play.  While titles like Madden and the MLB the Show series offer state of the art graphics and a focus on accurately representing their subject matter, they don't truly really offer a great variety of play options.  Quick play mode, season mode, franchise mode, General Manager mode, tournament mode, no matter how they dress it up at the end of the day it really is just game after game.  If you don't care for sports there really is no appeal.  But if you enjoy sports you know there is nothing repetitive about a good season mode somewhere.

There was no worries about steroids in the late 80's so the cover art could still feature a roided out batter.

With spring training just around the corner, it makes me think of one of my personal favorite early sports games:  Baseball Stars.  Released in 1989 by SNK Baseball Stars is one of many titles for the NES that tackled the national pastime.  While the pitcher/batter interaction isn't the best looking of the batch it makes up for it in fun factor.  Baseball games up to that point really weren't very good.  Many of those early Atari baseball games didn't really follow the game really well, and others made fielding nearly impossible.  Baseball Stars was different, you could field and run the bases with limited mistakes caused by messing up on the controller (Which sadly became a common issue with many baseball titles going forward).  The pitcher/batter interface wasn't as nice looking as some of the other baseball titles, but didn't have steep learning curve of many of those other titles.

There were other pitcher/batter interfaces that looked much better than this, but  this one worked pretty well.

In my opinion many baseball games have even to this day have been very poorly done, my favorite games are the more recent MLB the Show games, which really makes most other titles look bad.  So just making a fun and playable baseball game was quite a triumph, but what fans of Baseball Stars really remember is the customization.  The NES was the first system that really had any chance at this, due to the fact that you could save the progress in your games.  Since Baseball Stars lacked any kind of MLB licensing they gave you a few teams, and you had to create teams to fill the rest of the roster.  The players from these created teams were able to be named, traded, upgraded, or straight up released and replaced.

If Jim sucks and you can get a better player, you can send him off into the sunset, quite literally.

At that time that kind of customization was insane.  It wasn't even that common for players to have unique attributes, let alone a whole General Manager mode. First you create your own custom league with 2-6 teams and setup the number of times each team plays each other.  As long as you are controlling your own custom team you will earn money after each victory that can be used towards hiring new players or upgrading the players you have.  Add the fact that there were statistics and a league leader section for the season mode, Baseball Stars was really one of the first great sports game experiences.  There was a direct sequel out for the NES, and then Little Leauge Baseball: Championship Series and Legends of the Diamond which featured a roster of legendary baseball players which featured very similar gameplay.  After the NES Baseball Stars moved to the Neo-Geo with two more Baseball Stars games with big improvements to the graphics.

Undoubtedly these traits have become the standard of any sports title now to keep the replay value of the game as high as possible.  So I always credited Baseball Stars for raising the bar early for other sports titles.  So if you are looking for a fun and addicting take on the national pastime try to hunt down Baseball Stars.

This April I will probably venture a little deeper into the very deep pool of early baseball title but for now I will leave you with some Baseball Stars gameplay from YouTube.

        

And Baseball Stars 2 on the Neo-Geo.