Title: Super Bases Loaded (NA) Super Professional Baseball (JP)
Release Date: 6/17/91 (JP)
Developer: Tose
Publisher: Jaleco Entertainment
"The first of many, many baseball games that will grace this series; in fact, I am surprised that there wasn't a baseball game sooner. But baby, once those floodgates are open, do these games keep-a-coming; we actually have another baseball game within the next five games."
When I first played the game for this blog, I actually enjoyed this one a good bit. A nice baseball sim can be quite enjoyable. I knew that there would be a lot of baseball games to come, but boy was I not prepared for the sheer glut of all of them. It pretty much seems that almost every developer from this time had a baseball game in their repertoire; like it was some sort of barrier to entry to the video game business.
Background
Super Bases Loaded, as it is known in North America, is actually a baseball game from a long series of baseball games for the NES, known as, you guessed it, Bases Loaded. Originally, Based Loaded started as an arcade game in Japan known as Moero!! Pro Yakyuu (or "Burn!! Pro Baseball"), but then moved to a Famicom port in 1987, and then to the NES in 1988.
Bases Loaded was considered a hit baseball game, and soon became a hit franchise, warranting three more sequels on the NES/Famicom. Gamers enjoyed Bases Loaded for its, at the time, realism and accurate gameplay: they enjoyed the fast pace, and the over the shoulder, tv-style, camera for play, as both batting and pitching is done from this angle (see above). The game also featured a few other novelties that delighted players, such as each team having their own strengths and weaknesses (which are unknown to the player except through experience and finding out for themselves), and one player on each team who will charge the mound and start a fight if provoked. It should be noted that since licensing real-life professional North American baseball teams was quite an expensive proposition back in the day, that the teams and players are all fictitious in this game, with only the name of the real city being used instead.
So when the release of the Super Famicom/SNES came around, it only made sense for Jaleco to publish another entrant into the franchise. As with all the previous entrants into this series, this game was developed by Tose, the infamous Japanese "ghost developer," meaning that, in many cases, Tose is used as a workhorse to get a good bit of the work done for the owner of the property, without taking any of the credit. They might work in conjunction with another team, or do all the work themselves, yet the result is the same: they take the money, but none of the glory. Tose had made a name for itself for developing games quickly, cheaply, and was basically a "gun for hire" during the early video game console days. While this was definitely one of their successes, Tose can be seen as a very hit or miss developer, with many of their misses being quite bad. They produced a lot of licensed properties, ports, and other assorted miscreant video games throughout this era, and this certainly won't be the last we see of this band of miscreants, as they developed the popular Dragon Ball Z games for the Super Famicom. And heck, if you are wondering if these bad-boys of video game design are still around, sure as sugar they are! They are actually partially responsible for the 3DS game, Resident Evil Revelations. Yup! you read that right, Tose helped develop one of the best Resident Evil games in recent memory.
"But wait" you say, who is that mysterious and ruggedly handsome player who graces the cover of the game? Well, a common belief in the United States was that if you didn't have some sort of household name on the cover of your box, it just wouldn't sell (even if they didn't appear in the game). In this case, the household name is Ryne Sandberd (*shrug*) who apparently is one of the greats. Nicknamed the "Ryno," Ryne was a 2nd baseman for the Phillies and the Cubs for a decade and a half all-told, and was a "perennial all-star." Neat! Sadly nothing too interesting about him other than some charity work and just being a stereotypical ball player.
Gameplay
So what about the game? Well the game plays pretty much like the original NES series, yet the SNES graphics, power, and Mode Seven are used to great effect. The presentation of this game is actually pretty great for a quick-and-easy baseball game.
Now when you choose to start the single player game, you are greeted by a text scroll, which you don't see in the video above. The "narrator" of this text is known as the "Drill Instructor" for his harsh tone.
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Basically, this text scroll tells you that he goal of the game isn't to just beat the other teams, but to do so with the highest rating. Whenever you complete a game, you are graded on 13 categories, such as # of hits, # of walks, # of errors made, # of strike outs, etc. It turns out that whenever you make of these mistakes, your original score of 100 is deducted points. So, as the drill instructor points out, the ultimate goal of the game, and actually the victory condition to truly "beat" the game, is to beat a level 5 team (highest difficulty) with a perfect 100 rating. It is a feat that is supposed to be incredibly challenging. It doesn't matter if you beat all twelve of the other teams (a "season" of the game cycles through all 12), the game doesn't truly end until you achieve this amazing, perfect victory. This is pretty crazy for a game that came out about two to three decades before "meta game" and "emergent gameplay" became common parlance (especially with a game as historied as baseball). Who knew, but apparently Tose and Jaleco reinvented baseball!
Another interesting thing is that the difficulty of the teams you play actually scales to your performance and your end score. If you defeat a team and play perfectly, earning a 100, your opponent is instantly scaled to the highest difficulty of "5." If you then receive a less than perfect score on that tough game, then you are demoted, once again, to a lower level of difficulty.
The actual baseball action of the game is quite fast paced and tight. I did find the "realistic" camera angle to be a bit disconcerting though: it is easy to pitch from this angle but I guess I am used to the opposite angle when batting. Thus the trick to batting, actually, is not to try to follow where the ball is heading, but actually to follow the catcher's mitt, as this will tell you where the ball is going to be. A fun note, even if you throw the pitch wide, the catcher's mitt will somehow disconnect from his body to make the catch (apparently this is a staple item to the whole series).
As I said, the presentation in this game is quite nice. The teams are all colorful and have funny names and personalities: the Chicago Cyclops, the Texas Tornados, the New York Mercs, the Atlanta Amoebas, etc. Once again, each team has their own particular strengths and weaknesses, and finding them out is half the fun.
Any good music?
Of course!
Ads and Commercials
I have one print ad...
It is interesting but that idea of the "perfect game" shows up in the advertising too. It is an idea that I would be proud of if I was Jaleco, and I am glad they wanted to capitalize on it.
I also have one Japanese commercial...
Final Verdict
I will say, not only does Super Bases Loaded make an excellent use of the SNES and provide a really competent baseball simulation, it manages to do so with a great deal of panache AND add a meta-game that is quite fascinating for the time it was created. I can see why this was such a popular series and lasted for quite a while after this title (I think we have at least 2 more sequels just on the SNES). I am not a big fan of sports games, but if you should own one baseball game for the SNES, you couldn't go wrong with this one.
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