Realsports Baseball 7800

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Atarifever1
Posts: 3892
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

Realsports Baseball 7800

Postby Atarifever1 » October 26th, 2007, 9:31 pm

Anyone who has been on these forums for long knows that I am a huge Atari 7800 fanboy.  I can find a way to not just enjoy any 7800 game, but also to prefer 7800 versions of games over, possibly superior, versions of games on any other system.  That is why playing this game came as such a shock to me.  Not only do I not enjoy it, but I actually find it contemptible.  I honestly hate this game so much I wish it could die. 

To explain why, I'll get the good stuff out of the way first, and then explain why that doesn't matter.

As far as 7800 games go, the sound here isn't too bad.  It's kept to a minimum, and although the crowd... ummm... static is pretty bad, the inclusion of music for different situations (e.g. runner in scoring position, bases loaded) is pretty well done.  As well, the pitching control, although a bit backwards, is actually pretty neat.  To pitch you hold a button and press the joystick in one of 8 directions.  All 8 directions are a different pitch/ location, which allows you to vary pitching.  As well, holding the button to set-up and then delivering on the direction press is a neat way to hide pitching from your oponent (as the direction give away only lasts half a second) and is more intuitive than any kind of simultaneous joystick/ button pressing I've seen in some games.  To bat, you hold a button and a direction and release when you want to start to swing.  That's a bit backwards again, but isn't terribly hard to get used to.  Graphics-wise, the game isn't terribly interesting, but it does look pretty clean.  The backgrounds are sparse, and there are only two sets of team colours, but it looks enough better than the 2600 game to be alright in my books.

So far we have a decent 7800 game right?  Well, that's what I thought too.  Then I pitched the ball.  Then I pitched my controller across the room.  To explain why I did this let's break down what happened in the time between those two pitches.

1) The ball travelled lazily toward the hitter.
2) The batter hit the ball about a half inch in front of my pitcher.
3) The game put me in control of THE CATCHER!
4) The catcher lazily walked to the ball.
5) All the time from the dawn of civilization up to this exact second
6) The ball reached first base.

To bullet point it: your fielding is SLOW, but the actual hitting and running of the computer is incredibly fast.  It's so bad that if the computer hits a ball the same distance they would bunt it, they will always get on, and you will always feel like they put you in charge of the wrong player.  Not just that, but if the ball is hit with any force at all, it will blow by your player before you even know it was hit.  And forget about returning the ball from the outfield.  You don't have time for that.  It's like every single ball ever hit anywhere in Atariville gets trapped in a corner.  Way to go Atariville Stadium, you've broken the laws of geometry.  Also, you will be given automatic control of whoever is nearest (by the games estimation) the ball... each step of the way.  So, if you know a ball is reaching the warning track in centre field, and you want to move the guy in centre field, TOUGH.  You will move the pitcher, the short stop, and then the guy in centre field.  This makes it impossible to get a guy in position in time to catch the rockets the computer hits.  The computer always seems to move whoever they want though, so don't worry, they'll catch everything, all the time.  You know, because that's fair.  No wait, I meant that other thing, what's the word?  Oh yeah, infuriating.

Thus, this baseball game is basically enjoyable except for the part where you play baseball. 
Score: 0/10

Yes, zero.





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