Gaming Memories 8: My Baseball Game

Gaming Memories 8: My Baseball Game

Three big things coincided with my life in the early 90's.  First, the Atlanta Braves became one of the best teams in history(with what might be the best pitching rotation in history).  Second, I began playing little league ball(I sucked), and 3rd, I finally found the baseball game that I enjoyed playing the most.

I had been through all the baseball games I could rent, and since baseball was huge in the south, there was a lot of options because they brought in money to the rental stores.  There was Backyard Baseball, Tony Larussa Baseball, Tommy Lasorda Baseball, RBI Baseball.  My favorite that I felt got batting, pitching, and field play all "right" was Super Bases Loaded on the SNES by Jaleco.  Most games got pitching or batting good, but hardly ever both, and almost all exclusively had real shitty field control.  With Super Bases Loaded behind the pitcher view, it allowed both the pitcher and the batter to have unobstructed views of what was going on.  Sure, later the games like Sega's World Series Baseball would do it even better, but that was several years away.

The defining feature about this game that keeps it staying in my memories to this day was that they never got the license to use Major League Baseball teams or members.  Yep, all the teams and all the players were made up.  Notice Ryne Sanberg's non-logo cap on the front cover! Usually I would hate this.  I was a stickler for "realism" when it came to my baseball games.  It could be a fun game(as Backyard Baseball was), but because it was cartoonic, I did not stick with it.  So why did I still vote Super Bases Loaded as my favorite of all time?  Create-a-Team.

I never got to play baseball at a higher level, I pretty much sucked so bad I gave up even dreaming of doing it well.  But for a few days in the early 90's, my little league team got to play in giant stadiums and throw 90+ miles per hour pitches and hit 400+ foot line drive home runs.  I'm really thinking of opening my box of little league memorabilia and seeing if I still have a roster list of all the players, maybe its time for the team to come out of retirement.