#83: Roger Clemens' MVP Baseball

Play Ball!

This game is new to me, but I've played a lot of baseball games in my day. I didn't think I'd have much of a problem with this one. Boy, was I wrong...

Toronto Bears?!?

The first problem was a corrupted rom. It was making the annoying loud clicking sound that helped give Jack Nicklaus Golf the dreaded F- rating. On top of that most of the graphics were garbled. So I went out and got a different copy. This one had fine graphics but it still had the headache causing sound. This automatically made me unhappy, but I wanted to persevere and see what the game had to offer...

I GOT IT! (I don't got it...)

What the game had to offer is the worst fielding experience I've ever seen. Pitching is done with home plate at the bottom of the field. Fielding is done with home plate at the top of the field. The camera does an annoying swivel between the two which made it impossible to properly orient myself to field the ball.

Even worse the bases remained in the first orientation when it came to the controller. So I couldn't throw to the right base. It feels like if I want to throw from the outfield to second base I should hold down and throw but that would send it to home plate. Even after I figured out what was going on I couldn't get my hand to listen because of so much baseball game muscle memory.

I pitched to 9 batters. All 9 hit balls that should have resulted in an out. Instead they scored 6 runs and left the bases loaded. I wanted to try out hitting but I couldn't conceive of ever getting anyone out.


Rating: F-

#45: WWF Super Wrestlemania

Eat your vitamins, kids!

I have always been a WWF/WWE fan. I rarely find time to watch on tv anymore, and I haven't seen a Pay Per View event in many years, but I still enjoy tuning in from time to time. As a big gamer who likes wrestling you'd expect I'd like this game...

OH YEAH!

You'd be right! I used to play wrestling games in the arcade, and on the SNES, and a ton of them on the N64. I definitely played a lot of this particular game as a kid. It has a survivor series mode where each team has 4 characters on it, and I definitely had to give that a spin. My team was captained by The Million Dollar Man Ted DiBiase and was rounded out by The Natural Disasters (Earthquake and Typhoon) and The Macho Man Randy Savage. Snap into a Slim Jim! The computer chose Hulk Hogan, Sid Justice, and The Legion of Doom (Hawk and Animal).

WOO!

Wrestling games eventually evolved with lots of bells and whistles. Characters would get access to their signature moves. You could get steel chairs from the stands. This game is before those times, but was still very fun. The controls are relatively smooth and make sense. They use 6 buttons, which is great! The characters may not have special moves but they do look the parts at least. The Million Dollar Man and Earthquake were my two favourite wrestlers as a kid, and I hated Hulk Hogan, so it was a good blast of nostalgia to be able to take Hogan down with Earthquake.

I haven't played a new generation wrestling game, and now I'm tempted to try to track an xBox 360 one down...

Rating: A