#12: Super Bases Loaded

Gratuitous butt shots have changed in 21 years...

Super Bases Loaded was the first non-bundled game we had for the SNES when I was a kid. (I believe our Uncle John Boy gave it to us at the same Christmas we got the SNES.) As such this is actually one of my most played SNES games. Compared to previous baseball games we'd played (Baseball on the Intellivision and Street Sports Baseball on the Commodore 64) this game was pretty good. The controls were pretty responsive, you could sub in pinch hitters, plenty of different teams to play...

I have played the perfect game.

It also had an interesting rating system. You earned points for awesome plays. You lost points for striking out, and committing errors, and lots of other bad things. It gave the game some bonus replayability that didn't exist in previous games.  Not as good as adding in a season/league format but still a good step forward.

Quorb! Quorb! He's our man!

I tried to remember which team I used to play and thought there was a reasonable chance it was the K team. As soon as I saw the starting lineup page I knew I'd picked right. Even after all these years I still remember Lynn, Leigh, Quorb... Ryan as the starting pitcher. It's definitely time to play ball!

Sponsored by Saiko?

I managed to hit a home run! You get treated to a little montage with confetti and some scoreboard animations.

Underhanded!

One thing I remembered was how stupidly overpowered the K closer was. He threw underhand and had a really fast fastball. You hold up to throw hard and to throw high and it just combines very well with an underhanded pitcher to be practically unhittable by a human player. The computer didn't do much better here!

Whew!

I ended up barely winning the game (I actually had a big lead but then had a bit of a bad inning in the 8th. My closer was only good for one inning it turned out and I tried to play him in the 7th and 8th and it went poorly.) But the real question is... Did I play a perfect game?!?

Turns out no. Not even close. I struck out 7 times, hit a guy, and walked a guy. It was an intentional walk (runner on 2nd, 1 out, and his pitcher was on deck) but the game still dinged me 3 points for it. Sigh.

At any rate I have absolutely no desire to play a second game. It was an interesting nostalgic trip but the game hasn't actually aged all that well. Pitching isn't as robust as I'd like now. No curve balls. No real way to throw high and slow or low and fast. But for the time it was pretty fun.

Rating: C