Original Release: Hudson, 1988, Turbografx 16
Other Releases: Wii (2007)
A basic baseball game with no MLB affiliation.
World Class Baseball (Turbografx 16, Hudson, 1988)
Where to Buy: eBay
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
Well, it’s better than NES Baseball. That said, this game still kinda sucks.
It’s not licensed by MLB or its players union. Not that that necessarily matters for fun factor or anything, but don’t expect “real” teams or players of any sort. Instead you get some crazy world league with goofy names like the Paris Fries and the Tokyo Ninjas.
It’s one of those simplistic older baseball games, where you control the whole field at the same time and can’t switch between players. But there are a lot of goofy quirks to it that make it frustrating.
First of all it’s almost no fun whatsoever in one player mode, as the computer pitcher always throws some wicked perfect curve every single time based on wherever you are standing in the batter’s box. And then when you are pitching, the strike zone is all ridiculously narrow and pitches that seem to be inside of it get called as balls. Fielders move and throw so slowly, and the distances between the bases are so short, that ridiculous little dribbling infield grounders usually turn into base hits. Oh, and you freeze up when you get the ball, so some guy can be running right by you and you can’t move to tag him. Outfield is a nightmare, you move so slow you can only get to the ball if you psychically predict where it is going to land.
The game also doesn’t have a “real” season mode, Pennant Mode is basically just like old Tecmo Bowl where you have to knock off all the other teams one by one.
I know there are no other good baseball games on the Virtual Console right now but I think this one is still a waste of time. They’re bound to release something halfway decent eventually, I would just hold on until then.
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