(Apologies to Stephen Colbert for the thread title.)
Seriously, though, is RBI Baseball for the NES not one of the best games ever made? It’s almost 20 years old now, and yet people still play it often. The World Series Game 6 video got me back to playing it, and now I’m amazed to find just how fun it can be in the era of high-def photo-realistic games.
I was surprised to learn there was an arcade version featuring all-time teams. Talk about stacked: the heart of the Yankee order goes Gehrig-Ruth-Mantle-Dimaggio, and Mattingly and Maris aren’t good enough to start. The game also predicted that McGwire would hit 62 HR (not bad for 1987, huh?)
Yeah … to my experience, the arcade game preceded the NES version by at least a year. There were Nintendo home systems sold in the U.S. in 1986? I’d have guessed 1988 at the very earliest.
I had loads of fun playing the arcade version with the rotund players. Somehow, I never warmed up to the more realistically-proportioned players in the NES version.
The Yankees had great batters, of course … but the Braves, A’s, and Giants hitters were just about as good. The Reds and Astros had insane pitching. Pitching was fun in general – you could make the ball break so late, especially with guys like the Reds’ Bucky Walters and the Astros’ Mike Scott.
Re: McGwire’s 62 HRs – IIRC, they actually extrapolated 1987’s real-life stats from mid-season out to 162 games. They also gave Jose Canseco 54 HRs, and a few other players had inflated numbers.
Wow … the NES was available in parts of the U.S. in fall of 1985 :eek:
Guess it was slow to percolate into my neck of the woods. Most of my friends were into computer gaming at that time … saw loads of Nintendos by 1989, however.
This remains one of my all-time favorite arcade games. In 1990 I lived a block from a bowling alley that had it. My future brother-in-law and I would go there several times a week and play it head-to-head. It was awesome. We still talk about it sometimes.
Actually, the players were the same. All they did for the home version was replace the all-time teams with the 1986 and 1987 division champions. The home version was released some time in early 1988 (since the 1987 teams have 1987 season “stats.”)
There exists a set of ROMs with all 30 teams and 2006 rosters, which is kind of fun.
RBI Baseball 2 and 3 had skinny players (and pretty much sucked.) 3 had historic teams, which helped a bit, but the pastel-color field and graphic hiccups didn’t do it any favors.