Vintage Game Review: Baseball Stars 2 NES

It's been a longtime since I've done a vintage game review and with summer coming, I should be playing a lot of vintage games on the bus rides home from work. A while back, I purchased an NES controller with USB plug for my computer, downloaded an emulator and have never looked back. While I own about 100 real NES games for the actual console, I started to notice games becoming more expensive. With trying to save money, I've gone the free route, downloading ROMS from the Internet.

Baseball Stars is an important game in the industry and it's game style led to the development of all the recent sports games. Baseball Stars 2 was one of the first games were you could take a team through a season and actually manage the team. You get paid for attendance, which is based on how well your team is doing. It's been a while since I've done a season mode, so the details are a bit foggy, however I recall it being a lot of fun.

I mainly play single games and these can be very fun. The batting is pretty simple and once you get your timing right, you can do some serious damage with the better hitters. You only need to press one button to swing, which is a whole lot easier then most games today.

Like many older games, fielding can be a tad bit challenging, as you have to follow the small shadow on the ground to track the ball. However, if you master the hitting, you won't need to be a great fielder. Players all field and throw differently based on their skill ratings.

Base running can be somewhat challenging if you want to tag on a fly ball with the bases loaded as all the runners automatically advance. A small trick when running to first to beat out a throw is to frantically tap "A" and seems to make your runner move quicker.

This game can be found for usually around $20 (cartridge only), although if you look hard you can find it in the $10-$15 range.

Gameplay 3/5
Fun           5/5
Total         8/10