Approximate Release Date: December 1, 1991
Genre: Baseball/Baseball Simulation
Developer: Culture Brain
Publisher: Culture Brain
As someone who doesn’t like baseball, it’s almost as if Super Baseball Simulator 1.000 was made for me.
For some people, baseball games are all about realism. But baseball is boring in real life. So Super Baseball Simulator 1.000 offers a mode that adds power-ups to America’s pastime. Do you want fastballs which hit almost 200 miles per hour? Guaranteed home runs? Baseballs that stop in mid-air or turn into a bird? I loved trying out all the different power-ups because some are dumb and goofy in the best way.
There’s also regular baseball and leagues and all that boring nonsense. Why would you play that?
Super Baseball Simulator 1.000 looks great, too. There’s a good variety of player sprites, and each stadium looks slightly different. The pitchers, in particular, have really good throwing animations. It lacks MLB licensing, as most games from this era do, so Cubs fans can’t recreate their favorite tragic seasons here. The fake teams are all named after cities but otherwise have no character. Luckily, there’s a robust Team Edit mode, so if you’re spectacularly crazy you could put the actual teams and players into the game.
But the game controls well, and every action is intuitive and responsive. I was able to catch pop balls with no trouble, and I didn’t often feel like the game was working against me like in a lot of baseball games. There’s no way to choose what player to control while fielding, but rarely was I controlling a different player than I wanted. Both batting and pitching perform exactly how you would want them to, and both are enjoyable.
The best praise I can give Super Baseball Simulator 1.000 is that its dumb fun. I had a blast with it. Super Bases Loaded has been dethroned as the Super Nintendo’s best baseball game.
Tomorrow: Let’s get muddy with Super Off Road.
Oh man, this was an awesome game. Played the heck out of it back in the early 90s…loved all the crazy power-ups and such too.
IIRC, I made some crazy league of teams from Minnesota,Wisconsin and Manitoba (my geographic area…long story short) and it wasn’t uncommon to have some looney scores.
Love your blog, takes me back!