Bases Loaded

"What the original Baseball should have been"

For those of you that have played the original Baseball for the Gameboy, you know what it's like. There seems to be a good core gameplay trapped somewhere in that nightmare, but it just hasn't been unleashed. Well, Nintendo realized it too. Very soon after the original, Nintendo released Bases Loaded. By comparison, Bases Loaded seems like almost nothing more than an upgrade of the original. But the few small changes they make the game much better, and it goes from a mediocre game to a good game which is actually fun.

One of the obvious upgrades goes to the graphics department. Visuals in the game have been improved in the short year gap between them. Characters a more detailed, and the backgrounds have been far improved. While they still don't look great or anything, they look much better. There aren't anymore Atari graphics, or low-effort sprites like those anymore. Characters are bigger, more detailed, and more colorful. It's a good improvement, and finally makes the game not too bad to look at.

The gameplay has been finally polished, thus showing that the core idea was actually good. It's still divided into the two basic sides: Batters and Pitchers. When you are on the batting side, you simply walk up to home plate and bat. If you hit the ball, you run to the different plates trying to get back home. I'll save further detail because I assume everyone knows how Baseball works. Once your player starts running, you can press the button to let him try to steal, but if it looks like they could throw it before you would reach the next base, it's usually a bad idea. Also, it’s now a pain in the ass to try to run back. If you do, the opposite player goes into a frenzy, which is extremely fast (and looks absolutely hilarious). But, it's still much better than the last game. Homeruns are no longer a dream, and can happen quite frequently. So can successful steals. As a matter of fact, this finally controls like a baseball game! You can actually do things that you could do in real baseball! You can manage your teams; hold out your bat for a bunt, have a throw, which is a ball! It’s finally there and EASY to do!

Pitching has now been improved over the last one. Not only do you finally see it from his perspective (Yay!), but you can also control how you pitch. You can choose where it goes, which direction it curves, etc. This makes pitching much more fun. The problem is, the computer will not bat unless it knows you are pitching it straight, which really pisses me off because it eliminates any fun in using it. Not only that, but the computer is much better than you will ever hope to be. They can throw the craziest pitches that you will never be able to hit, and then throw one right at your head that still counts as a strike.

On the upside, control is also much better. Your characters, while still all controlled at once, feel much less sluggish. For one thing, they are a lot less slow than they used to be. So, when a ball is headed a little beyond you, you can actually run to it and have hopes of catching it! Also interesting is now how the shadows guide you to the ball, which was much less executed in the last game. Throwing is still a pain in the butt, but since characters can actually move properly now, it's not as big a bummer as I originally thought. In short, the new control actually lets you play the game correctly, and you can finally have some fun.

There still aren't many tunes, and not many sounds either. The music is merely average, and its rather hard to rate one beep from another. So an average score will work.

The replay value has now also become a lot better. Without computers, the annoyance of the game are finally gone, and it is now a really good game. There's all the fun and strategy of the way you pitch the ball to your friends, or deciding how to hit, etc. You can also now swap out characters with different stats for different areas. It's fun sometimes to screw with your friend by changing pitchers halfway through to make them change their direction and such.

Overall, this is a much better game than Baseball ever hoped to be. Every flaw in the original was improved, minus the difficulty that has now been ramped up. If you're looking for an old or fun sports game for the Gameboy, try picking this up. Its gameplay is simple and addictive enough to keep you playing it for quite awhile.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 01/28/02, Updated 09/09/03