Baseball Stars is a 1989 baseball video game developed and published by SNK for the Nintendo Entertainment System. It was also released in arcades by Nintendo through their PlayChoice-10 arcade system.

Features

Baseball Stars was the first baseball game to have battery backup on any console, and the first NES sports game to have battery backup. The game also introduced a role playing element; as each game played earns the winning team money, and the amount won is directly related to the sum of the prestige ratings of the players from both teams (as prestige determines how many paying fans attend the game). The money can be used to purchase upgrades to the various abilities of players currently on the roster, or it can be used to purchase pre-designed players

Gameplay

Simple graphics are coupled with repetitive upbeat 8-bit music. The pitching is simple: curve balls, fast balls, off-speed pitches, and sinkers. The batting is a swing on a level plane, thus it is simply a question of timing. The fielding, at the time, was a revolution in arcade baseball; it achieved a level of realism unseen prior to its release. This realism, coupled with ease-of-fielding features contributed to the game's popularity. These ease-of-fielding features are characterized by examples such as off-screen fielders automatically drifting towards fly balls, fielders catching balls anywhere near them, the ability to jump and dive, infielders shifting to prevent extra base hits down the line when men are on base, etc.

It is possible to deliver unhittable pitches that would "drop" as they crossed home plate, the only clue would be a high-pitched squeak as the pitch came towards home plate. However, despite the high sound, sometimes these pitches failed to drop and in fact crossed home plate for strikes.

Seasons and vs.

right|frame|The main menu for Baseball Stars. From here all the different options are accessible.

Baseball Stars includes a simple one-off versus mode, but it provides the option of creating a mini-league of up to six teams, with each team playing up to 25 games against every other team. That means a season with a maximum 125 game schedule can be created. When making a season, one chooses how many teams, how many games, and which teams are controlled by the AI (computer) and which are controlled by the gamers. In vs. mode, no stats, such as wins, losses, hits, or home runs are kept but money can still be won when a player controlled team plays against an AI-controlled team. No money is won in this mode when it is player vs. player. Versus mode games can be considered exhibition games.

Teams

There can be a total of 14 teams. Eight teams come with the game and six more teams can be created. The original eight cannot in any way be edited or changed.

Although the game does not use any real Major League Baseball teams, one of the default teams, the American Dreams, included players with names that are based on real (former) baseball players such as "Pete" (Pete Rose), "Hank" (Hank Aaron), "Babe" (Babe Ruth), "Sandie" (Sandy Koufax), "Cy" (Cy Young), "Denny" (Denny McLain), and "Willie" (Willie Mays). In addition, the Japan Robins included a player named "Oh," presumably after Sadaharu Oh of Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball.

The other default teams are the Ninja BlackSox, IGN placed it at #28 in the article "Top 100 NES Games". Baseball Stars placed #3 on Yahoo!'s "Top 5 Best Old School Sports Video Games". Baseball Stars was once voted most popular baseball game according to a poll taken by Nintendo Power magazine. David Littman, a producer on EA's NHL series of games, stated that the popular GM mode in those games was originally inspired by Baseball Stars. It received a perfect 5-star rating in the book Ultimate Nintendo: Guide to the NES Library 1985–1995.

Sequels

In 1991, a sequel, Baseball Stars 2,

The Neo-Geo game Super Baseball 2020 share similar gameplay with the series, but in a futuristic, science fiction settings.

Notes

References

  • Baseball Stars: Be a champ! at Arcade History