Super FamiComplete #20: Nolan Ryan's Baseball (Redux)

Title: Super Stadium (JP)

          Nolan Ryan's Baseball (NA)

Release Date: 07/12/91

Developer: Affect

Publisher: Seta Corporation (JP), Romstar (US)

I can not attest what it is like to play through baseball game after baseball game on this blog. It is...disheartening.

Background
So here we have our second baseball game for the Super Famicom, and this with the great Nolan Ryan's name attached to it. In fact, his name is the only name attached to the game in the US, as the game has no other licensing agreement with the MLB or any other player, so every other team and player within the game is completely fictitious. 

For those of you curious about who Nolan Ryan was, he was a rockstar pitcher who played major league baseball for a ridiculously long time, from 1968-1993. During all those years, he is known for consistently keeping his pitch speed above 100 mph and having a ridiculously fast curveball (that is a lot of ridiculous). Finally, he has easily set the record for the highest amount of strikeouts, with a total career of 5,714 strikeouts (to put that into context, the runner up, Randy Johnson, had a total of 839 strikeouts). So, needless to say, a spectacular baseball player. He sticks out in my head as such a good pitcher, that when I go to trivia competitions with my friends, he is the only baseball player I guess when sports comes up as a category (I really am not a sports fan). 

The game was developed by Affect, a company that was a little known, mainly Japanese developer that only seemed to be functioning mainly in the early 90s. After this time, they moved onto Japanese only games, and then onto web development. The only other games they made that I recognize are the really hidden gems (with great music) Cacoma Knight in Bizyland and Kendo Rage. The game was brought west by the publisher Romstar, known for bringing west most every popular arcade game from the big developers that you have heard of: Capcom, Konami, SNK, etc. 

I am beginning to think, since many of these baseball games are coming from smaller developers, that a baseball game was an easy way to get funding to either stay afloat or develop other projects. It is like how when a Shakespeare company or theater troupe needs easy money, they put on Macbeth (one of the reasons why MacBeth is considered bad luck, is because when you hear producers saying the name, it means they are going to scrap your play and put on the Scottish play since it is profitable). I mean, this is a very tough hypothesis to confirm, but it is one that seems logical. 

Gameplay

Now the game itself is pretty standard. The game has either a "exhibition game" option or a pennant run, which can include either a ten game tournament, or a whopping 160 game tournament. The game has 14 different teams to choose from, but all of them are pretty much identical. Your players, as well, are pretty much all identical. They all start out with a baseline stat, and they all look identical as far as uniform or face. As well, they kind of look like a Japanese "chibi" style character. 

 

The game is actually pretty challenging. Being named after a pitcher, you can expect the pitching in the game to be pretty on point. The pitching comes fast, and your timing as a batter has to be  frame perfect as far as execution. Fielding, as well, is rather interesting, as you control all the players at the same time. If you move the right fielder down, the second baseman moves down as well. It kind of works.

Music?
Oh yeah...

Ads and Commercials
Nope! This seems to be one that time forgot. Go ahead and put one in the comments if you can find it.

Instead, I will add this!

Final Verdict

It is a stereotypical baseball game for the period. Nuff said. It is not as "arcadey" or flashy as Bases Loaded or even the one that comes the blog post after next. It also has a very high skill ceiling, which might be off-putting for retro sports game enthusiasts.