Beginners should pick a motorcycle-heavy team like Detroit (cus it’s the motor city, get it?) and just never stop doing flips. Watch your players’ HP though, because if it hits zero they detonate and are eliminated from the rest of the game.
However, the biggest departure for Base Wars from other baseball games is that instead of force outs or tagged runners, there is a separate battle mode, complete with weapons and health bars, where the winner determines whether the call is “safe” or “out.” The season mode lets you fully customize 6 teams, earning money after each game to visit the parts shop for repairs and upgrades. With the right upgrades, pitchers can have direct control over the ball as if it were a mouse cursor. Players take control of 4 different variations of robots (flying, tank, cyborg and motorcycle) that shoot the ball out of arm cannons instead of throwing. This isn’t a ranked list, but make no mistake, Base Wars is the best baseball videogame money can buy. It’s pretty bonkers for a game that bills itself as a simulation.Ĭyber Stadium Series: Base Wars, 1991 (NES) Batters can fight back with launching fly balls that cast multiple shadows or hit a grounder so hard that it knocks the player attempting to field it all the way to the outfield wall. Some of the pitches will cut a hole right through the bat and a fiery beanball will literally explode the batter, expelling them from the game and this mortal coil.
They have a player named Daniel who’s an amazing hitter, not that I’m biased because we share a name or anything.Īt first glance, Baseball Simulator 1.000 looks like any other run-of-the-mill 8-bit baseball game, but its secret weapon is the variety of special pitching and batting powers that dramatically transform the way the game is played. After a couple games with one team you’ll learn who to sub out from the starting line-up and who to put in the cleanup spot. On top of all that though, Little League Baseball has a lot of personality with international teams from North America, Asia, and Europe, three different player body types a la Ice Hockey, and embedded skill level stats and characteristics, like running speed, for each player.
Games only last six innings instead of nine and the ten-run mercy rule is in effect. If you think baseball games drag on forever, Little League Baseball might be the game for you. Little League Baseball: Championship Series, 1990 (NES) Fielding also has some tricky jump maneuvers that are really satisfying to execute correctly. There are also animated cutscenes that play on the jumbotron when you hit homeruns (I love the hand-slapping animations). Tecmo Baseball uses the Bases Loaded-style behind-the-pitcher camera for its batting interface but frames the action pragmatically between picture-in-picture panels of first and third bases. Tecmo Baseball is kind of a sleeper hit compared to the company’s Tecmo Bowl football series, and it’s not very showy, but it does combine several cool elements from other baseball games of the time into a unique package. The background music comes in two varieties, is on a short loop, and is hypnotizing and infectious. Baseball also has the most cringe-inducing audio sample for beaning a batter, sounding like their 8-bit vertebrae crumple in on themselves. There’s nothing particularly special about the way it plays, but the rounded characters kind of look like Fischer Price’s vintage Little People figures, and when the ball is in play their legs pump like little alternating pistons as they trudge their way through the outfield. Baseball is a charming, classic baseball romp. Many more baseball videogames have offered solid sandlot simulations over the years, but this list is for sluggers only. Most of the games on this list were released in the late 80s and early 90s, when baseball videogames had peak variety in features and styles. Now, baseball videogames, and sports games in general, are notorious for their short shelf lives and annualized, iterative improvements, but a select few are actually worth returning to long after their rosters go stale. The 2017 Major League Baseball season is upon us, but why sit behind a giant foam finger drinking an $8 beer when you can take to the diamond yourself, in videogame form.