Genre: Baseball
Developer: Tose
Publisher: Jaleco
Year: 1988
Basic Idea: After trying not to drop fly balls, bean the opponent’s best hitter to start a brawl.
Review: This baseball game has some serious flaws, but it’s loads better than the other three games in the series. I am pretty sure the main reason I can tolerate all the flaws is because I owned it and played it a lot, adjusting to them.
What really set Bases Loaded apart from all the other baseball games out at the time is that the strike zone, for the first time in video game history, had depth. You pitched from the perspective of the pitcher, and could try pinpoint placement of your pitches. Not only that, your batter couldn’t just swing; he he had to aim his bat as well. The game has other advantages over its contemporaries. There were clearly spoken umpire calls for “Play Ball!” as well as “safe/out” and “ball/strike.” Landing a curveball on the outside corner and hearing the umpire yell, “Strike three. You’re out!” back in 1988 was pretty sweet. The music, while repetitive, was pretty darn catchy. When you hit a home run, your pitcher would hang his head in shame while the batter would do a little showboating. And as already mentioned, if your best batter is beaned, there’s a chance he’ll charge the mound and kick the living daylights out of the pitcher.
This game would easily be top 50 if it weren’t for some seriously difficult running and fielding controls. Unlike most baseball games, you advance bases by holding the base you’re coming from rather than the one you’re going to, which is really counter-intuitive. Controlling your defense is insanely difficult as well. Defenders run slowly, especially when going diagonally. Moreover, tracking fly balls is nigh impossible, as the camera waits until the last second to catch up with your outfielders. The defenders are already going towards the ball, but making last second adjustments is difficult. The final dagger is that while the defenders are slow, they’re throwing arms are insanely good, as tagging up from third is likely to result in an out even if the center-fielder catches the ball at the warning track.
While the game didn’t have an MLB or MLBPA license, it was still easy to fall in love with the players, as they all had unique names and unique batting stances. Some even had unique showboating on home runs. My favorite team was always Hawaii, with Debro anchoring the lineup. I never played through a whole season, mostly due to the significant lengths of a single game, but I did enjoy it quite a bit as a kid. Unfortunately, due to the above flaws, I don’t see myself enjoying it much anymore.
But I’ll never forget the umpires, Yuk, Dum, Boo, and Bum.
Death By Troggles 
Your ‘basic idea’ is spot on. Catching fly balls was a nightmare.
This game was great, though. I loved playing with Miami. Pitching with Henter, mashing with Warner. Good times – back in the day, anyway.
I booted it up in JNES last year, and it’s almost completely unplayable. I can still play a few of the baseball games from the era, but this one’s just too rough.
It’s funny to see what other teams were people’s favorites. A lot of people loved New Jersey because of Paste. While he had the best stats in the game, I honestly don’t know if he hit any more homers than Warner, Bacon, Debro, et al.
I think the nostalgia would trump the “too rough” part if each game didn’t take an hour or more to play.
Like with Double Dribble (Josh Hack’s, Mark Kriesel and Jeff Tucker), I remember whose house I was at and who was there the first time I saw this game. It was Alex Studemann’s house with Ross & Matt. The pitching perspective was wowing.
Past that….pffffffbbbb. It doesn’t hold up.
Can we get someone to combine all the best elements of baseball games into one? I know you know this, but I love, LOVE the batting system in Bottom of the 9th. The better the hitter, the bigger your contact box was to aim and connect with the pitch in a way more likely to produce a hit. Swing for power? Your box get’s tiny, but if you line it up right with a guy capapble…HR! Then the ! pitches. Too bad the game had a bunch of other flaws. Really wish other games had copied that batting system. Maybe one has.
Mlb the show is pretty amazing. It tracks each players hit zone. If a player can’t hit high inside in real life , he can’t hit it in the game either
Can we get someone to combine all the best elements of baseball games into one?
Yeah, MLB: The Show pretty much did that.
Okay, let me rephrase. Can we combine the best elements into a game that is for a PC/emulator that is still arcade enough or falls within the free time limits of a parent who isn’t interested in playing out a season in real-life time?
I did play MVP 2005 couple years ago and it seemed to have a good pitching/batter system with hit zones and such, but it would be way too time consuming to play things out. It was also hard as hell to get any kind of hit, but maybe I’m just old and/or suck.
Not sure what you want is possible. The reason most of the NES games were quick is because most at-bats last one pitch due to how easy it is to hit the ball. Bottom of the 9th wasn’t even that quick. Most games took about 45 minutes to and hour.
One other thing about the game I’ll give props to. Hitting homers is not easy. Each team has one slugger, and that guy hits a ridiculous amount (a little less than one per game), but unlike most baseball games for the NES, every other player hits homers at a very reasonable rate.
I barely ever played this. I really liked the novelty of the view but even at the time, I was annoyed by the controls. I primarily played RBI and plain old Baseball.
oy, Baseball has not held up at all. Unplayable after 1990 or so.
I’ll bet. I remember distinctly throwing to first and beating the runner by several feet. The umpire yelled out “SAFE!” and the runner just lazily ran through first. Admittedly, I laughed for a very long time.