
Welcome to TJ's Time Machine,
a new regular feature here at Operation Sports. Join TJ Cutini as he takes you
back for a look at classic sports titles spanning the last three decades of
gaming history.
TJ's Time Machine
As
I sat and watched so many historic milestones being reached this week in
baseball, I got a bit nostalgic. I suppose every baseball fan does a little bit
of reminiscing whenever a record falls. But my nostalgia wasn’t so much about
the baseball I was watching on my television. It was about the baseball I could
control on my television so many years ago. I’m talking about one of the
greatest baseball games to ever grace any console. I’m talking Baseball Stars.
And so this week, we set the time machine back to 1989. The Nintendo
Entertainment System was king. Kevin Mitchell was in the midst of a powerful 49
home run season, and my buddy Taylor and I were staying up all night to try to
get our “Steele Creek All-Stars” to eclipse the “Lovely Ladies” in the area of
prestige.
Baseball
Stars was a game with a feature set that would soon become the norm in
sports gaming. You could create your own team. You could name your own players.
You could build your team’s attributes through money you earned in each win. It
was truly an RPG in the guise of a baseball game.
You can play Baseball Stars in any number of ways. You could use an
already existing team just for kicks. The “American Dreams” (no relation to
Dusty Rhodes) were a team made up of the greatest players ever to grace the
diamond – with obviously changed names to avoid the need for pesky licensing
contracts. Instead of Babe Ruth, you simply have “Babe”. Instead of Hank Aaron,
it’s just “Hank”. You get the picture.
I prefer though, to play Baseball Stars the way it was meant to be
played. To me, this game is all about creating your own team.
We’ll
start off by creating the O.S. Sluggers. I can hear the “Lovely Ladies” shaking
in their skirts already. Team creation is fairly simple. You pick a city name
and a team name. Then, it’s on to the logo selection screen. There aren’t a
whole lot of choices available. Whoever decided on the logos must have had a
bird fetish because there is not one, not two, but three bird logos to choose
from. You can also pick a polar bear (because who in Antarctica doesn’t play
baseball?), a cat, a baseball with eyes, and a few selected letters. O is not an
option here, so we’ll go with the baseball with eyes. As I think back, this is
probably the one I picked most often as a kid.
Now that we have our name and logo, it’s time for the real fun to begin – to
name our players. Back in my childhood, we weren’t so much worried about having
accurate authentic rosters. We had much more fun putting our friends’ name in
the game. So that’s what we’ll do here.
As I type in each of my player’s name, I’m reminded of how tedious this whole
process is. Instead of having a virtual keyboard which has become the norm in
sports games, I am forced to scroll through a linear representation of the
alphabet to name each guy.
Fret not though, as this is presumably the only time you’ll ever need to meander
through this part of the game. Once your player’s are all named, you’ll never
have to worry about that again.
Now
that we have our team, our logo, and all of our players named, it’s time to move
on to the real meat of this game – League Play.
Once you set your league up, you’ll play through your schedule. Unheard of in
it’s time, this game tracks stats such as batting average, home runs, and ERA
for pitchers. It’ll keep track of all those stats for you as you progress
through the league.
The idea here is to earn as much money as possible so you can upgrade and
improve your players. The smart way to get started is to do a two team league
with ten games, with your team and the Lovely Ladies as the two participants.
The reason behind this is that the Lovely Ladies are high on a rating called
“prestige”, and the prestige rating carries the biggest payout when it’s time to
collect your cash at the end of a game. The more money, the better your team
becomes.
As you improve your team, you’ll have the opportunity to actually purchase new
players, another concept not yet seen in baseball video games. Of course, the
better the player, the higher their contract will cost.
League
play is just one way to play Baseball Stars. There is the standard versus
mode as well, which is best spent showing off your custom team, especially after
you’ve gotten it to the point where you’re competing with the American Dreams on
a regular basis.
Baseball Stars was truly a game ahead of it’s time. Ask just about any
late 20’s or 30 something about his favorite NES baseball game, and chances are
that Baseball Stars will be on the top of their list. From the custom
team creation, to the ability to rename all of your players, and the RPG aspects
of it, it’s a title that’s screaming to be released on either the Wii’s Virtual
Console or the Xbox 360 Live Arcade. Maybe then, a whole new generation could
find out just how sweet it is to beat the skirts off the Lovely Ladies.