Category: Video Games

8-Bit Halfwit is a series where Brent Blackwell, a longtime but not particularly skillful gamer, revisits NES games in order of their release. To see more in this series, click here.

Details

Release Date: October 18, 1985
Genre: Sports / Baseball
GameFAQs rating: 2.68/5
GameFAQs difficulty level: Just Right
GameFAQs length: 4.6 hours
Background: Baseball was a key component of the NES’ early success, because it appealed to non-gamers at the time. While dad may not be interested in plumbers fighting turtles, he might be up for joining his kid for a game of the American Pastime. Baseball was a hit, and it’s remembered fondly by many for its role in launching the NES.

Game On

The first task of Baseball is to select your team. The choices? A, C, D, P, or Y, with the computer having already chosen R. I think these represent MLB teams on an unofficial basis, but I don’t know. This game came out in the mid-80’s, so I’ll take C, hoping that’s the Cardinals. I would guess the others are the Athletics, Dodgers, Phillies, and Yankees, but I don’t know.

Ok, it’s totally the Cardinals, made clear by the faithful jersey coloring of baby blue trimmed with bright Cardinal red. I’m playing R, a team wearing two shades of blue, so I’m guessing this is a digital rendering of the 1985 Fall Classic, the I-70 Series, Cards vs. Royals.

R’s pitcher opens the game with a 45 mph eephus on the outside for ball one. My leadoff hitter grounds out, but the 2nd batter sneaks one through for a single. Batter #3 gets a single as well, but unfortunately, the AI for the runner, if there’s any at all, is so poor he gets thrown out at 2nd base. The cleanup hitter makes contact on a swinging bunt, and given that the R pitcher moves like an Ent, I imagine I should reach first. And indeed, the C runner does reach first before the R pitcher, but I’m called out anyway. This game is designed to make you hate baseball.

The bottom of the first goes poorly, but not without some highlights. My pitcher unleashes a 100 mph fastball that helps generate some strikes, including one punch-out. Unfortunately, it’s all undone when, with two runners on, a harmless ground ball towards the 1st baseman goes awry. With two outs in the inning, all I need is for the first baseman to pick up the ball and step on the bag. Unfortunately, the 1B doesn’t seem to respond in any way to my controls, so he moves immediately toward the bag without picking up the ball. This leaves the grounder as the responsibility of the covering 2B. From there, things get wacky.

The 2B, on his own path out of my control, as far as I can tell, seems to make a beeline for the ball instead of playing with any kind of anticipation. Naturally, the ball, despite moving slowly, rolls past the 2B into right field. The right fielder, meanwhile, for no discernible reason, has moved away from the right field foul line, moving himself out of position for getting to the ball. How is the ball fielded, you may wonder? Naturally, the second baseman chases* it into the corner.

*Chases = casually saunters

R has scored 3 runs against perhaps the worst defense ever placed on a baseball field, and yes, that includes the 1991 Ball Ground Chippewas, a team for which I was so terrible a defender, after making a routine catch in the outfield, the coaches literally had the ball taken out of the game so they could date it and use it as a trophy for me. This is not even remotely a joke.

The first inning ends on a bang-bang play, and team C is down 4-0. Good. I hate the Cardinals. As I take my turn to bat in the 2nd, I realize that despite not including mechanics for me to move my own defenders, I was somehow able to move around the batter’s box. For the 2nd, I’ll experiment with moving all the way up. This immediately pays off with 3 singles, loading the bases. I either can’t control the runners or haven’t figured out how. I line out for out number one, but then single into the gap, scoring only one run.

I had noticed this earlier, but the AI for the R pitcher is baffling, because he keeps attempting pickoff throws to first base. Mind you, I don’t have the foggiest idea how to steal, but if I did, I don’t think I’d do it WITH THE BASES LOADED. He throws over to first 3 times. They’ve included AI to make an already slow game unnecessarily slower.

After lining a 102 mph fastball down the opposite line, I figure out how to control baserunners, at least to an extent, pressing B while pointing at the desired base. I don’t know if there’s a retreating option, so I’ll be careful with that. But it worked out, scoring two on the bases loaded single. After tying things up 4-4 on another single, the inning ends with more bad baserunning – on a ground ball to the first baseman, he manages to first step on the base and then tag my runner who failed to do anything. He was standing still.

I hold R scoreless in the bottom of the 2nd, and decide to experiment more with the batter’s box in the 3rd, this time moving all the way to the catcher. After a groundout, I worry that this isn’t optimal, but on the second pitch of the inning, I hit a HR that seems to leave the stadium. Team C takes the lead! Maybe moving back is a good thing. The applause in this game inexplicably sounds like machine gun fire.

I will spare you the other gory details. I put 6 runs on the board, but the defensive miscues were massively insurmountable. Every time a single is laced into left field or right field, it first hits the wall and then lies waiting for my corner outfielders to go pick it up. You’ve heard of OF’s taking bad angles to the ball before, but that’s just a figure of speech in baseball. Usually the defender’s path is linear, and the worst ones are curved. In Baseball, they are indeed angles. RIGHT ANGLES. Every time, you must eschew the hypotenuse for the legs. It makes the game damn near unplayable.

In short, I lost, 17-6.

At the game’s conclusion, the scoreboard announced: “GAME SET”.  This isn’t a baseball term, but Japanese programmers might have imagined it to be. There is no fanfare. There’s just a moment of silence between you and the scoreboard. It’s JUST long enough for you to start to think about what you’ve done. The shame reaches the precipice of the edges of your fractured soul. As it’s about to overwhelm you, at that moment where all is about to be lost, it optimistically fires back to the start screen. One or two player game? I opt for zero and turn this abomination off.

This is not me:

Game Over

I appreciate that having a baseball game helped launch the NES, and the simple wonder of playing video baseball on your own TV set was probably enough. Otherwise, what a shit game. Unlike 10-Yard Fight, which had similar limitations but managed to be creative within them, there just wasn’t a way to make this entertaining or fun. There were enough features to at least make it potentially interesting – variable pitch speeds, checked swings, pickoffs, some decent animations, but it falls short of being anything I want to play again.

1.5/5