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.
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