Can you hit the high heat?
In the late 1980s, making baseball simulators was all the rage – so much so that SNK, a company known mainly for its mahjong and menu simulators, decided to get in on the action.
The outcome of this adventure, after years of mahjong and menu programming, was the gem known as Baseball Stars. Despite coming from a different programming and developmental perspective, Baseball Stars generally plays like any other baseball game released for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Baseball Stars does, however, feature some new ideas that merit a closer look.
1. A new approach to crowding the plate
Traditionally, when a player wanted to crowd the plate, he or she would step closer to the plate. This was done to annoy the pitcher, who happened to be trying to throw the ball over the plate, as the player edged closer to being hit with the ball in order to take a base.
In Baseball Stars, SNK expanded the area that could be crowded by allowing some players to stick their butts out farther than any other baseball simulator did at the time. This is more of a crowding the batter’s box approach, as players make sure that if a pitcher throws the ball behind them intentionally, they will take it in the rump and move on to first base.
2. Characters that move diagonally
In most baseball simulators of this era, and in real life, characters tended to move only left and right and up and down. In Baseball Stars, however, if you can manage to find some precision in your clumsy sausage fingers and press up and left, up and right, down and left, or down and right, your player will run on an angle that is approximately 45-degrees between the X and Y axes.
3. Characters that look like they’re stolen from a game developed by Konami
In Baseball Stars, SNK decided to go with a unique style of graphics that had not been seen by the video gaming public.
4. Bunting from any number of angles
Baseball Stars allows players to decide the angle of their bunt by giving their batters five or six frames of for their batting animation. Players can cycle through all of these by lightly tapping the ‘A’ button.
5. Unique presentation
SNK decided that baseball is best understood by players if the playing field is divided up into squares, an idea typically reserved for role playing games. But now that I can see where the batter is thanks to this unique highlighting, I’ve had no issues with understanding that this is indeed a baseball game.
6. Learning how to distinguish men from women
Baseball Stars is one of the first – if not the only – baseball game to feature a team comprised solely of women. You can tell they are women because they are wearing pink, the only colour women are allowed to wear when outside of the house.
This, of course, does not explain where they got the shoes or why they’re allowed to assemble in groups of 3 or more.
7. The joy of turning off your NES and going outside
If Baseball Stars teaches us anything, it’s that sometimes it’s more fun to just go outside. Thanks, SNK!
Now, how many magic points does it take for me to get up and turn the console off?
I think I just incurred a 50 hit point loss +5 elemental Cheeto damage.
Rating: 
