THE (NEW) OLD BALLGAME

THE (NEW) OLD BALLGAME

FEATURES

BILL KNIGHT

In the spring, a young man's fancy might turn to love, but a baseball fan's attention tends to head instead toward the ground-ball out (and there's no sex there, slugger).

Baseball is meant for summer sun and dusty diamonds, but to every fan falls a little rain delay. Indoor alternatives had to be found. Once these small-scale variations on the sport arose, it was only natural that gamers stormed the game rooms of America and took command of baseball's new ballgames.

While jocks itched for outdoor pursuits, underdeveloped types perfected many types of "baseball" contests to befuddle and otherwise intimidate creeps with biceps. During the reign of the Roman Empire, dice were invented os another version of the then-popular "Gaul-bali/' During the Dark Ages [before movable type and the Designated Hitter rule), feudal wars were waged with Crusades trading cards (anyone out there got a Lancelot rookie card from 997 A.D.?). And in the New World, countless explorations of the Old West were enlivened with 19th Century renditions of baseball board games ("Hey—let's have the Aztecs take on the Donner wagon train in a best-of-five series!").

With the advent of the microcomputer and the popularity of wasting entire summers away in the privacy of your own home, VIDIOT decided to updote history texts on the current indoor baseball games. Our scouts scoured arcades near baseball card bubble gum factories, video retailers known to have whirlpool/resuscitation chambers in their back rooms and tov stores with sockfilled locker rooms hidden in crawl spaces to file this report.

Before I finished, I found a surprising underworld. ! always assumed most gamesters thought a "reserve clause" was having a token hidden in your shoe. I knew they were into hi-tech games about throwing turtles, wrestling foreign cars who've dug into your sleeping bags, and singing in the rain, but now they've also mastered the national pastime!

Not even Fernando Vidizuela could resist the lure of a snappy hand-held game or a VCS cart once he hears that sharp crack of the joystick.

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Ninety percent of baseball is halfbaked. The other half is totally fried. While the powers-that-be cry about the integrity of the gome, they merchandise it like f.T. runaway kits. Looking for new and popular games, it's difficult to locate them amiast other licensed trivia. There ore baseball banks, Band-Aid dispensers with your favorite club's logo on it, dwarf bats that are really deadly-weapon ballpoint pens and catcher's masks that can double as toilet seats.

In Peanuts they play hardball, on Cheers they talk about the Red Sox. Reggie Jackson has endorsed VCRs ana even Tony the Tiger swings iumber on boxes of Frosted Flakes.

The games? They're everywhere once you know where to look. Aside from the "real world" game of bloody spikes, smashed helmets and broken 38-ounce blackjacks, VIDIOT has narrowed baseball to three major categories, each with games that are league-leaders and some that ore strictly second-division.

HAND-HELD GAMES

A game in the hand is worth two in the bush leagues. Baseball's Great Thinkers [Jimmy Piersall, Toni Tennille) talk about it being "a game of inches." Hand-held contests are— literally. They're the fast-food franchises of game-playing—quick, clean and concise. There's no Dugout Dread like Board Games and no Infield Fly Fear like that experienced at arcades.

BB-10 Baseball Game (Casio):

This wiener-sized game/clock/calculator gives the term "squeeze play" a new meaning. An inqenius display screen shows the whole field and a coordinated zoom-lens view of the pitcher and batter's box. The full "game" is a 10-game series against the computer, with each opponent better than the last. Pitching is accomplished through three control buttons that speed it up and move it around. One key makes the hitter swing when you're at bat, and the computer's right-hander will put you in o slump the first few tries.

Baseball 2 (Entex): This is a pretty typical HH item, except that when two are playing, the pitching module can be detached for increased sneakiness. Pitching is random junk (or planned stuff with two players) including a knuckler, but the batting is dull—Entex decides with little fanfare what your "swing" should produce: hit, homer or a hot zero. Running is not required unless you try to steal in the 2-player mode, when a combo pick-off/pitch-out is also possible. But Entex needs on angle. How about making it the Jopanese counterpart to Mattel's HH game with Hari-Kiri doing the play-by-play?

Head To Head (Coleco): If Entex has the Asian entry, Coleco's Head To Head is Cuban: hot, rhythmic and full of smoke (the directions even come in Spanish as well as English). It mixes up the pitches (or let's the second player do so) and offers o difficulty switch to accelerate the velocity. Head To Head is a real batter's game, as one can hit for power, hit-and-run, tag on a flyball or bunt. It's only shortcoming is the lack of space for your fingers. You couldn't squeeze a Cuban cigar in there, much less a player's two hands.

Pulsontc Baseball I (Megoj: Leggo my Mego! Most HH dandies have good painted fields, but this gome's molded-plastic "stadium" is so lifelike, you expect a miniature billboard reading "Hit This Sign and Win A Fruit." Other than that, Pulsontc is pretty standard, with the game itself pitching to the offense, who can only steal in addition to trying to hit.

Mattel Baseball (Mattel): This came out in 1979, but it's still the HH equivalent to the ivy-covered friendly confines of Wrigley Field. The circuitry is tricky when pitching ("beginner" or "pro"), o good thumb-response test. After contact is made, the batter must run (or overrun or take an extra base), and the game gives different hitters different paces. There are no game errors, but a homer sets off red flashes and tinny beeps like the Red Alert on o two-man sub. Foul tips: a speedy runner can always turn a possible triple Into an inside-the-palm home run, and reaction-time is helped when you hold the game perpendicular to your face, improving the perspective,

World Championship Baseball (Mattel): This is a new generation, but instead of making earlier games obsolete, it just expanded on HH groundwork. WCB is as complicated as Tommy Lasorda's celebrity coaching schedule, but is the most challenging of the HH games once mastered. I'm surprised it doesn't include a button for rotator cuff surgery. Two Intellivisionlike keypads let you enter an entire lineup, position by position. Although it has sound effects like dying horseflies, it's fairly realistic. The view of the field is from the perspective of an upper box seat down the first base line. The pitching is tough, and there’s constant double play trouble. The cover is irritatingly reflective, but after ten minutes at this, your family will wonder if you moved away.

Coach's Box: On the lighter side of HH games is Digital Diamond. What screwball dia this? It's just barely electric, with more cheap moving parts than a tinker toy set. It's inexpensive ($10} and overpriced.

Microvision's Blockbuster Baseball combines likeable aspects of Casio's particle screen and the flexibility of cartridge systems (Blockbuster also has Star Trek, Sea Duel and other space and sports games), but it's still one long seventhinning stretch.

The best advice for Hand-Held skippers: Name your teams. Sparkling lights and funny noises are fine, but it's more fun to root for teams with handles like Woodpeckers, Tulips, Sloths, Cubs or Honkers.

CARTRIDGES

Tackling VCS games about bone growth, brain death and bad guy wrath is one thing. But few compare to the computer's skill in skunking you at baseball. There's little strategy in cartball; it's largely wham-bam-tnank ya, Sam. I have to go to bat for the cart concept, though. Sure, some of the flickering wraiths posing as players throw the ball ail over the field and other ghosts run like they're recovering from a bad case of mumps that went down on 'em, but most videogames offer a measure of relief when stranded at home during summer droughts. Home Run (Atari-VCS): This should be titled Home Run Derby. You con play against the computer, but what's the point when the only wov to make it fun is to see if you can blank the machine or score 100 runs? There're only three fielders, so the action's not exactly electric. A red St. Louis Brownout.

Major League Baseball

(Intellivision): Here's the standard against which all video sports should be measured. Aside from the initially awkward keypads (they feel fragile, though under the game's strain they stay sturdy), the game is tops in graphics, sound effects and authenticity. The keypad comes in handy for controlling all nine fielders and deciding which of eight possible

itches to unleash. It treats all batted

alls as grounders (even homers, oddly enough) out the hitter can go with the pitch—poke to right, pull to left—and after reaching first, burn up the basepaths. Defense is genuinely important, not something for the nonbatting player to do after the pitch.

You con even turn two on smashed grounders. Got to be the best ballgame since the Great FlannelPolyester Controversy. It's a wonder Mattel doesn't feature some Casey Stengelese coaching signs from the third-base box.

RealSports Baseball (Atari-VCS): Lots better than Home Run, but not much more real. Newcomers will toss the ball all over the screen, fielding is as easy as typing with your elbows, the crowd noise sounds like five people giving you the raspberry, the fielders sprint like drugged slugs, but the pitching can be devious. Once the defense relies on the strikeout and puts a lot on the ball (mixing the pitches), it'll be easier to forget the cart's inconsistencies and Dad visuals (GREEN BASES!). On offense, only game 1 is easy to hit (power the slider to Home Run Land); 2-3-4 are Whiff City. If you get on base, stealing is required to score. After enduring a very few games, the players are all the same: ideal and dull, like the Yankees in the '60s.

Super Challenge Baseball (M-

Network-VCS): It's a relief to see Mattel get bombed occasionally after their perfect game for Intellivision. Players must know baseball fundamentals for this to be remotely tolerable. Fielding is weird (no shortstop!), running is bad (automatic: boring), non-existent batting is adequate at best, and only pitching presents any interest. Tenth-inning tips: cross-breed pitches like mutant hybrids, and come up with nicknames for these faceless players to keep you awake (Dodo, Skeets, Twitchy, Arky, Suitcase, Flea, Schoolboy, Bad News, and Hack □ re my starting lineup). You'll never hove to ice down your joystick wrist with this.

Tornado Baseball (Astrocade): Bally's Astrocade packages baseball with hockey, tennis and handball, which is like making your Grandma sleep with the Three Stooges. Pitching is the only field action, but the main problem is its unnatural system controller—shaped like a broken handle off an Afghan rifle. Not even as "exciting" as Dogpatch, at least this has a console calculator to let.you do your math homework or taxes, which are more fun.

Coach's Box: Emerson Radio's Arcadia 2001 also has o baseball a me for its system, but both are ifficult to track down. Vectrex hopes to have a mini-cart for its stand-alone unit out this season. And ColecoVision's Contact Baseball (with Super-Action Controllers) is due out any inning. Although priced at about $75, that includes controllers which will be usable with other ColecoVision games—and required upcoming corts like boxing and football. The improved keyboard (speedroller, four fire buttons and knob/stick] are super-sensitive: they respond like kitty whiskers.

ARCADES

Arcades aren't exactly home entertainment, but some people do call the attendants Mom. Major League Baseball has limited its electronic wizardry to bench-warming computers that spew out probabilities on Steve Carlton fanning Dave Kingman (.955) and exploding scoreboards. But it sired a subculture of pinball and videogames that let any 98-pounder be Babe Ruth—for the right price.

Deluxe Short Stop (Williams): Almost priceless, with a colorful, oldfashioned back scoreboard, a rapid machine pitcher and a small diamond displaying baseball figurines batting and running. Strawberry Shortcake at Comiskey Park.

The player needs the reflexes of a snake to hit in Short Stop, as both the "fast" and "slow" pitches roar out of the blind chute like bullets with your initials carved on the tips. Once contact with rhe pinball is made, it rolls to outfield holes labeled double, out, etc. There are also a few ramps which con guide and loft the ball into the seats, but rarely do.

One or two players can participate, and there are no balls nor walks, so it's a fast quarter's worth. However, you get two plays for 25 cents and a chance to match like other pinball games.

Double Play (Midway/Bally): Here's a Pong-era video game that's still fun, though expensive (a quarter only gives you one inning). The I - or 2-player game has a CRT screen projected on o green and brown field, and offers a control panel consisting of a batting button, a pitching joystick (slow-fastcurve-scroogy] and a dial to move three outfielders. The remainder of the defense is solid, with randomlyoccuring errors helping to make it "realistic." The computer pitcher is a grandstander who'll set you down, wondering where your quarter went if you're not alert.

Deluxe World Series (Chicago Coin): Yet another almost-antique, with marble-sized ball bearings rifled at the batter like heavy metal peas hurled from Mound Olympus. The game is a six-foot cube featuring a metal ballpark wall designating out or hit, extra-base or single. Besides racking up runs, the player can try for "extra innings" with homers, which also cancel an out. The batter calls for the type of pitch desired (straight, slider or curve) and responds to it when it emerges from a ramp/trap door. To swing, a two-inch steel button is depressed (or beaten), but there's no penalty to take a pitch, it's difficult to lift the ball into home run territory, although line smashes ore a snap once the timing is perfected (after about four dollars). *

Whether an eensy steel ball or a husky horsehide one, a hit's a hit. And the Great Equalizer, fatigue, stays in the showers for all these arcade games.