Original Release: Summitsoft, 2004, Game Boy Advance
An “extreme” baseball title (sans MLB license) in the tradition of arcade titles like Baseball Stars.
Crushed Baseball (GBA, Summitsoft, 2004)
Where to Buy: Amazon
How to Emulate: coming soon!
Review by: C. M0use
Seeing Gregor Clegane stuffed into a baseball uniform on the cover should indicate to you right away that this is an unrealistic, non-MLB-sanctioned baseball game with over-the-top “super moves” in the lineage of games like Baseball Stars and Super Baseball Simulator. While there’s nothing wrong with the super-roided Crazyball premise in theory, Crushed Baseball fails to crush it thanks to an oversimplified pitching/hitting system, iffy fielding and graphics that were technically impressive for the GBA hardware but really have not held up to the test of time.
You’ve got a roster of about 15 fictional teams with equally fictional rosters, and your only options for game modes are a very simplified League mode (with no player trading or GM-type duties) or one-off exhibition/two-player link cable games.
The graphics are actually somewhat impressive in their level of detail relative to the timeframe and the limited GBA hardware. Players have all sorts of little details in their animation and the ballpark backdrops are equally nice. They were attempting to do maybe a bit too much with too little hardware, however, as there can be stuttering and lag when the ball is hit into the outfield. Throwing to each base also feels off as well, as if the inputs are way too sensitive … accidentally throwing to the wrong base seems to happen way too often.
The crux of the game being tedious to play is the pitching / hitting system. This is the toughest area for a baseball game to get right, and I don’t blame the developers for leaning oversimplified here. The trouble is that hitting is just too easy, and pitching is far too random. Use of each player’s “superpower” (invoked when their good play builds enough “mojo” up by pressing the L button) ends up playing too much of a role, taking a lot of strategy and skill out of the game.
Videos