Played (with a friend) as part of Atari 50.
As much as something as pointless as the card game War can kinda be marginally entertaining with a friend, RealSports Baseball can be as well. But even after reading the manual it's nigh impossible to actually play it. Most sports games are going to be way too complicated for the 2600 to be able to handle them without deep abstraction and this is no exception. The batting is weird and inconsistent, alternate pitching modes either don't appear to do anything or don't work at all, on multiple occasions the baserunning glitched out and allowed someone to run in the middle of a pitch, just kind of a total mess. The only reason my score isn't lower is because there is a novelty in fumbling around with it and not immediately seeing everything laid bare, as is the case with something like Outlaw. No more than 10 minutes or so, but that's more than plenty of other 2600 games!
As much as something as pointless as the card game War can kinda be marginally entertaining with a friend, RealSports Baseball can be as well. But even after reading the manual it's nigh impossible to actually play it. Most sports games are going to be way too complicated for the 2600 to be able to handle them without deep abstraction and this is no exception. The batting is weird and inconsistent, alternate pitching modes either don't appear to do anything or don't work at all, on multiple occasions the baserunning glitched out and allowed someone to run in the middle of a pitch, just kind of a total mess. The only reason my score isn't lower is because there is a novelty in fumbling around with it and not immediately seeing everything laid bare, as is the case with something like Outlaw. No more than 10 minutes or so, but that's more than plenty of other 2600 games!
I don't know why they called it RealSports when I am clearly sitting in front of my television screen to play this.
Kids these days.
Also I cannot for the life of me figure out how to throw any pitch besides an intentional ball. Yes, I did read the manual.
Kids these days.
Also I cannot for the life of me figure out how to throw any pitch besides an intentional ball. Yes, I did read the manual.
It's a baseball game where it feels like anytime you're going to pitch, the first pitch will be a strike and every other pitch will be a BALL. It works, and it's a baseball game, only positive way to look at it is it gave us the MLB games, so this is a great grandfather to that, but im never playing this ever again. Played on Atari 50.
For one of the first ever sports game on a console, it gets the job decently enough. You got innings, multiplayer modes, the essence of what you really do in a baseball game with pitching, batting and running. That's really it though.
not a high bar to cross, but it's an improvement over the affront to god that is Home Run.
Unlike in Home Run, there's a baseball diamond, there's innings, there's pitching baseballs, and there's even hitting baseballs. It still kinda sucks but it's at least playable I guess.
It took me way to long to realize I was in 2-player and that's why the batter wasn't hitting anything I threw at him. Then, after that, when the batter still wasn't doing anything, it took me way too long to realize I was supposed to input my pitch pattern before throwing (this is why it helps to have the manual at-hand instead of only googling it when u get stuck). Then came the realization that the CPU hits the ball 100% of the time because that's a totally fun aspect of baseball.
Once they hit the ball, you probably won't even be able to pick it up, but even if you do you sure as hell aren't fast enough to throw the ball to a teammate, let alone run after the batter before he gets to base. And God forbid you throw the ball to the wrong guy when you're trying to throw it to your pitcher, because it's gonna take you a while to get things moving again after that.
I don't have much to say about batting because I could not for the life of me hit the god damn ball
Unlike in Home Run, there's a baseball diamond, there's innings, there's pitching baseballs, and there's even hitting baseballs. It still kinda sucks but it's at least playable I guess.
It took me way to long to realize I was in 2-player and that's why the batter wasn't hitting anything I threw at him. Then, after that, when the batter still wasn't doing anything, it took me way too long to realize I was supposed to input my pitch pattern before throwing (this is why it helps to have the manual at-hand instead of only googling it when u get stuck). Then came the realization that the CPU hits the ball 100% of the time because that's a totally fun aspect of baseball.
Once they hit the ball, you probably won't even be able to pick it up, but even if you do you sure as hell aren't fast enough to throw the ball to a teammate, let alone run after the batter before he gets to base. And God forbid you throw the ball to the wrong guy when you're trying to throw it to your pitcher, because it's gonna take you a while to get things moving again after that.
I don't have much to say about batting because I could not for the life of me hit the god damn ball
It didn't take me that long to find Baseball after seeing the condition Tennis was in. I was surprised at first to see Baseball not by Tennis at first, as I thought he would want to take care of him in his time of need, as he looked to be in a pretty rough state. However, when I saw Baseball, it made perfect sense as to why he wasn't taking care of him.
He had also caught the sickness, albeit to a much lesser degree then that of Tennis, but he still looked pretty weak compared to what he usually looked like. Wanting to know more, I asked him about what this disease was, if he knew anything about it, and in response, he gave me some brief, yet helpful information.
In the month I had been gone, this disease had started to make the rounds, infecting numerous people across the city, and it soon started to spread like wildfire, infecting many across the world. There is no name for it, at least from he knew, but he knew that it makes people experience extreme pain when trying to accomplish the simplest of tasks, unable to move as fluently or clearly as they once were, accompanied also by their sickened appearance.
Somehow, out of all of this, I wasn't infected, even though I had heard nothing about this disease, and took no precautions to try to avoid it. We weren't quite sure why yet, but one thing is for certain: if things don't get much better from here on, this illness could cause destruction on a mass scale, and somehow, I figured I needed to prevent this from happening.
Game #204
He had also caught the sickness, albeit to a much lesser degree then that of Tennis, but he still looked pretty weak compared to what he usually looked like. Wanting to know more, I asked him about what this disease was, if he knew anything about it, and in response, he gave me some brief, yet helpful information.
In the month I had been gone, this disease had started to make the rounds, infecting numerous people across the city, and it soon started to spread like wildfire, infecting many across the world. There is no name for it, at least from he knew, but he knew that it makes people experience extreme pain when trying to accomplish the simplest of tasks, unable to move as fluently or clearly as they once were, accompanied also by their sickened appearance.
Somehow, out of all of this, I wasn't infected, even though I had heard nothing about this disease, and took no precautions to try to avoid it. We weren't quite sure why yet, but one thing is for certain: if things don't get much better from here on, this illness could cause destruction on a mass scale, and somehow, I figured I needed to prevent this from happening.
Game #204
While graphically impressive for the 2600, it feels very finnicky and hard to play properly. Still, a solid effort at something complex.