Baseball Advance

"Hands down the BEST baseball game on the GBA, and a solid gaming experience"

Sports games have never been suited well to the inferior technology of handhelds. Fortunately, as handheld technology evolves, so does the viability of developing sports games for them, and out of this sprung Baseball Advance by Smilebit. Baseball Advance is a surprisingly good game that (I guess) didn't sell too well, because there have been zero follow-ups made.

Features
Baseball Advance features four modes: Exhibition, Season, Playoffs, and All-Star Game. You can play as any of Major League Baseball's thirty teams in four Major League stadiums. The game has a surprisingly good batting interface, and pitching lets you use a good seven different pitches.

Gameplay Modes
There are four game modes: exhibition, season, playoffs, and All-Star Game. Exhibition pretty much has you pick your teams, the basic options, lets you choose your lineup and in you go. All-Star Game has you pick a league and select your lineup. Playoffs is a little longer, letting you pick a team and run through an entire playoffs scenario, right up into the World Series. Season Mode is a little more in-depth, so I'll give that one its own paragraph, okay?

Season Mode
This is where the most of your gameplay will probably go. The season mode is surprisingly deep, including some decent stat-tracking to go along with the regular gameplay portion. Sadly, there's no player trades/other team management features to be found here, but the season mode is still fun. You pick a team and go through 182 regular season games, along with the All-Star Game and the playoffs.

Seriously, I was impressed with the depth of Season mode. It tracks all sorts of stats, from batting average, hits and home runs to doubles, triples, and errors. Obviously it's not a stat nerd's ideal situation, but considering that this is on a handheld, it's pretty impressive. Also, there are various records that you can attempt to break, like the most home runs in one season or the best earned run average. I will say this much, though: I've had this game for... three years now, and I've been playing it every now and then for that time, and I'm only beginning to come close to the end of my season. Let me tell you: 182 games is a whole freaking lot.

Gameplay
Batting is rather simple: move your cursor to where the ball's going, and time your release so that you'll make contact. When the ball's path is going to lead it inside of your "hit circle" (a larger circle surrounding your cursor), then you will lock onto the ball. The size of your "hit circle" varies with the batting skill of the player that you're using. The batting interface, in my opinion, is excellent. It really does a good job of making up for the lack of an analog stick on the GBA.

Pitching is also pretty simple. To start, you use the D-Pad to select what pitch you want by pressing the direction that correlates to the kind of pitch, press A, and then you have a bit of time to aim the pitch before it's thrown. Occasionally, your pitches might veer off and hit a batter. Again, there's absolutely nothing wrong with pitching.

The third part of gameplay is baserunning. Basically, you use L and R to order all of your runners to retreat or advance. You can use those commands in conjunction with the D-Pad to select an individual runner. Nothing bad here either... Runners follow orders, and no issues are to be had.

Fielding is probably the game's biggest weakness. Honestly, I just leave fielding on Auto, because manually, it's just not fun. When the batter hits the ball, the camera follows the ball. This means that you have little idea of where it's going to land until the game explicitly tells you with a little blue circle on the ground(the game's... less-than 3D view makes depth perception/etc. challenging), and you have little way of knowing where your players are in relation to the landing spot unless they're already on-screen. Yeah, fielding is just so stupidly challenging that it is boring, although you fortunately can just leave it up to the computer.

The stadiums
I figured I should throw this in: Baseball Advance only has 4 stadiums. However, they're really well done, and you can tell each from the other. The stadiums are Safeco Field in Seattle, Wrigley Field in Chicago, Fenway Park in Boston, and Pacific Bell Park in San Francisco. Again, unlike most other baseball games on the GBA, you can actually distinguish one park from another.

General gameplay notes
Frankly, after a couple games in one sitting, the game can be downright boring. However, at that point, I generally put the game down, and come back a few days later and I'm fine. Other than that, the gameplay on Baseball Advance is solid.

Graphics
Baseball Advance looks pretty good. In the batting interface, most players have their unique batting stances. Pitching animations are also true to the unique styles of Major League pitchers. The stadiums aren't necessarily what one might call beautiful, but they certainly don't look bad, and like I mentioned earlier, they're fairly detailed. Overall, the graphics are enough, because you will have no trouble telling what's going on... at least from a graphical standpoint.

Audio
There's hardly any audio in this game. Apart from a small snippet from The Star-Spangled Banner at the beginning of each game, the ambient noise from the audience, and the occasional crack of the bat, there's basically nothing. Obviously, there's going to be no commentary, considering what platform the game's on, but still, I'm sure the developers could've thought of something. Audio is one of the game's few below-desirable points.

SUMMARY
+Enough gameplay modes, I guess
+Batting is simple and fun
+Pitching is also simple and fun
-Fielding is too difficult due to camera issues/etc.
+The stadiums, while small in number, are all quality
-This isn't a game that you'll be playing for very long at once
+Above-average graphical quality
+Audio seems a little... empty

All in all, Baseball Advance delivers a solid baseball experience, and is clearly the best baseball game available for the Game Boy Advance. It's definitely a good game, despite sucky fielding and little audio.

Rent or buy? Baseball Advance really doesn't do a good job of lasting too long. I find it enjoyable, and do pick it up from time to time, but really, I don't think many people would be glad to spend thirty dollars on an occasional temporary diversion. So, I would say that unless you really need a portable Baseball game, and you don't own a PSP (because let's be honest, the sports fare on the PSP is superior to what we have on the GBA), you should at most rent Baseball Advance.

FINAL SCORE: 7

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 03/10/06