From Mom's Basement

Super Baseball 2020 is probably my favorite of the SNES sports games, not because it is a challenge, but because of it’s aesthetics. Baseball is visualized to take place in the year 2020, which adds in some funky new rules. For instance, robots (who break down easily) and women litter the ranks of the players. Only balls struck to dead center field are home runs, everywhere else the fans are shielded with glass and the ball will bounce back into play. In return, the foul zone is cut back to just the area between the bag and home plate, which is about an even trade off in my mind. You have a level of cash that is adjusted based on what you do on the field. Make a diving catch, gain $1000, swing and miss, lose $10. This cash is pooled, and you have the opportunity to buy “add-ons” to players, which is sort of a futuristic way of saying “put players on steroids”. They’ll be given 40% more power or 10% better fielding based on what you can afford.

Anyway, as I said, this is an aesthetic beauty of a game. It’s very well done graphically for the SNES, the controls are simple, and the amount of imagination put into it really shines. There are some weird areas of visualization (why put robots on the field that eventually overheat?) but there is also a certain charm to it. For instance, you have teams like the Ninja Black Sox and the Aussie Battlers, they kept a lot of old school baseball stuff around, but also added in that 90′s faux-future thinking that led to things like the Mercury Mets uniforms.

My only real complaint is that once you figure out what you’re doing, this game is way too easy. Oh sure, you won’t homer off the best pitchers, but you can just chip everything they throw off to the side and usually get it past the foul zone. Some of the AI pitchers, especially the robots, have this tendency to throw the ball inside over and over and over again, meaning you can pick up lots of money and runs since getting a hit by pitch gives you $1000 and takes away $1000 from the other team.

But worst of all, the AI’s hitting is just dreadful. I’m about 11 games into a season I started and I haven’t allowed a run yet, and maybe 5 or 6 hits total over the course of the season. One of the two pitchers that I use has one of the worse Runs Allowed statistics, so I’m sure you can duplicate this trick with anyone.

1) Have your pitcher be right-handed.
2) Don’t be tired.
3) Move to the far left-hand side of the mound. (From the game’s vantage point.)
4) Throw a pitch that starts on the left hand side of the plate as a ball, then curves in for a strike. Repeat this for the second pitch. The batter will almost never swing at this (the odds might be one in 10,000)
5) Start the third pitch from the same area, curving in toward the batter if they are left-handed or away if they are right-handed. You want this pitch to wind up about half-way into the right batter’s box.
6) The hitter will either strike out pitifully or pop up the ball no deeper than halfway to the outfield.

The only way this ever fails is if you hit the batter. You don’t need to worry about making the ball go fast, or even being particularly good with your aim. The very best left-handed hitters (.380 or higher) will be able to consistently pop that ball up. Everyone else will probably strike out. Want some proof? I wasn’t even trying in this game (check out much money I pooled and didn’t use) and this happened:

Yep, 27 strikeout perfect game. I repeat: I wasn’t even trying. So yes, this game is way too easy once you figure it out. Which is a shame, because if it were a little more challenging, it might be one of the best games on the system. Instead, it’s just aesthetically gorgeous.

Ah well, thats more than most games have. Bravo, SNK.

~ by Rivers on 2010/07/28.

Posted in essay
Tags: baseball, reviews, video games