Baseball Stars

About Baseball Stars

Baseball Stars (1989) is SNK's NES baseball game, the first baseball game with a battery save, letting players create teams and players, run a season and build their squads with prize money, features that became sports-game standards.

Baseball Stars in Depth

Battery backup let players create a team, set up a league, play a season and keep cumulative statistics, and it was also the first NES sports game to let players name their own players and teams. A role-playing element rewards each win with money based on the prestige of both teams' players, since prestige draws paying fans, and the money buys ability upgrades for players or pre-designed Rookie, Veteran and All-Star players; a hidden feature allows female players to be hired. Leagues of up to six teams can each play up to 25 games against every other team, for up to 125 games, with standings and top-ten leaders in batting average, home runs, RBIs, ERA, wins and saves.

Pitching offers curve balls, fast balls, off-speed pitches and sinkers, and batting is a level swing that comes down to timing. The fielding was revolutionary in its realism, helped by features such as off-screen fielders drifting towards fly balls, jumping and diving catches and infielders shifting with men on base. Eight fixed teams come with the game, including the American Dreams, whose players are named after legends such as Pete Rose, Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth, the Ninja BlackSox, Ghastly Monsters and the all-women Lovely Ladies, and six more can be created, each starting with about $30,000 and 18 players.

Making Baseball Stars

SNK developed and published Baseball Stars for the NES in 1989. It was a critical success, often called the best baseball game on the system, and Nintendo Power readers once voted it the most popular baseball game. In 1997 Electronic Gaming Monthly ranked it 87th among the best games of all time, saying it was "every bit as fun as it was eight years ago", and IGN later placed it 28th among NES games. Its create-a-player and create-a-team functions became standard features in sports games. It became an SNK franchise with five sequels: Baseball Stars 2 for the NES in 1991, which was far less popular because created teams and players could not be renamed and the graphics were not improved; Baseball Stars Professional, one of the first Neo Geo games, and Baseball Stars 2 on the Neo Geo; and two Neo Geo Pocket games. Its engine was also used in Little League Baseball: Championship Series.