Approximate Release Date: October 1, 1992
Genre: Baseball simulation
Developer: Namco
Publisher: Namco
Super Batter Up is dumbed down Super Nintendo baseball.
I like it. I’m never going to enjoy baseball games that come from a realistic and technical angle, so having one that is either nuts like Super Baseball Simulator 1.000 or basic like Super Batter Up is the only way I’ll have any degree of fun with the genre. Realistic 16-bit sports simulations are a personal nightmare of mine.
So when I say that Super Batter Up is dumbed down, I mostly mean that it’s pretty easy. There doesn’t seem to be a lot of finesse involved. I could be missing something, but I doubt it. This is a baseball game for beginners, so there are only two buttons and the D-pad is used for both pitching and hitting. I’m not any good at these kinds of games, but while doing prep for this post I held my own.
But sometimes Super Batter Up just goes and kicks my butt. It’s like it knew I was recording.
I would have liked to see it go further in an arcade-focused direction. As it is, Super Batter Up feels like any other baseball game just set to easy. The AI seems to be rather dumb and unskilled, the pitching and hitting are very generous, and it uses the same camera angles that the other games use. Doing something different and interesting is something that baseball games from this era don’t want to do and I really don’t know why.
I wish Namco had done anything to make Super Batter Up stand out. I had more fun with this game than most other baseball games. The lack of depth and simplicity that I enjoy are probably what will make people who know and care about baseball to not enjoy this game, though. I hope there is a baseball game for the SNES that can bridge what I want with what sports games fans want as well.
Tomorrow: Grab some headphones for Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, because I remember the music being great.
I also love unrealistic baseball games. Screw that stat-heavy simulator crap.
The Bigs is the best baseball game ever made.