|
Pocket Baseball
.: By:
Jason Surguine :: Device
used: E-125 ::
June 18, 2001 :.
Baseball, the old American past time. It reminds me of seeing little Jimmy play ball out in the street with the other
boys, in a movie. These days, it’s rare to actually see kids playing baseball out in the street or in a park because of everyone’s new favorite past time, video games. So, it only makes sense that baseball is emulated in video games. Especially for people like me, I suck at baseball, but I can destroy anyone in Baseball for the Atari 2600, Bases Loaded, Ken Griffey Jr., MLB 2000, etc.
However, before video games were widely available, people had to find another way to play baseball without having the need for a bat or any of that equipment stuff; therefore baseball board games
were developed. Ironically, Pocket Baseball emulates one of these board games for the Pocket PC. So essentially, you’re playing a game designed to be used as an alternative to a video game, on your system capable of playing video games..
err, you’re playing a board game on your Pocket PC... whatever!
Pocket Baseball
is as simple a game you can get. Well, you could ask for something more simple, but ASCII based games have been out of style for a decade or so. You start the game with your typical options for playing a baseball game.
Next, you decide who is the Home and Visiting team and who controls which team (Human or Pocket PC). Then you get to decide what team you are from the 8 generic teams: the Heroes, Bombers, Apples, Bays, Bums, Cowboys, Athletes, and Red Socks.
Once you have selected your team, you can change the lineup of the players to your liking, including what order they are in, what position they play, and you can substitute a player if you want. You also have the option to use a designated hitter or not. Once you have all of that setup, it’s time to start the game.
The game revolves around a text based engine in which you are given the choice to do a ‘Normal Play’ or ‘Bunt for Hit’ while you are at bat. If you have players on bases you are given a few more options, such as, ‘Steal Second’, ‘Sacrifice Bunt’, or ‘Hit and Run’. Once you select, you will get a message telling you what happened, e.g. ‘C. Knobby strikes out’ or ‘D. Jeeves flies out to shallow left’. This is the basic idea of how the offense is
played although, every once in awhile, when you have men on bases and you hit the ball, you get asked questions like "B Hoff flies out to center, send C Jones home? Success Chance = 91%".
On the defensive, you have a few more options: ‘Pitch Around Batter’, ‘Intentional Walk’, ‘Guard Lines’, and ‘Look for/Charge Bunt’. And ‘Don’t Hold Runner’, ‘Play for Double Play’, and ‘Pitchout’, while men are on bases. In addition, you are also given questions like, "Q. Vicious doubles to deep right, R. Focal is headed home! Go for the runner? Success chance = 20%’.
During the game, you can still change the lineup, with the same options as described above, except for an option to Double Switch, where, there is a button, but the ‘feature will be enable in future versions’. You can also view the Boxscore, which shows all of the players actions for the game so far. You can also view the Play by Play, which enables you to read all of the text messages from the game so far.
The main screen where all of the action (decisions) take place, is laid out rather sensibly, with a score box at the top of the screen, the text box in the middle of the screen, and at the bottom there is a box containing all of the batters in the lineup, and a graphical representation of the field. The field is a simple diagram that shows who is at bat who is pitching and any runners on base. There are also two little boxes that show what inning it is and how many outs there are.
As far as graphics are concerned, these are very basic simple graphics, with a total maximum of six colors on the screen at one time. This is not going to make any landmarks in PPC graphics. It’s pretty disappointing when you think that they could have at least put some pretty baseball pictures in for each of the actions, e.g. when you hit the ball or strike, it shows a picture of baseball player hitting or missing the ball.
In addition to the lack of graphics, there is also a lack of sound. Let me rephrase
that. There is no sound. No music, not even one sound effect, nothing. Even Baseball for Atari had the little ‘Take Me out to the Ball Game’ tune in it, and cheesy ‘bleep’ ‘bloop’ ‘tuk, tuk tuk,’ noises in it.
As the Pocket PC is capable of, at the very least, wave files, this game could have easily implemented realistic sounds, such as the crack of the bat when it hits the ball.
The game play itself is relatively amusing. If you have absolutely nothing else to do this may occupy you for a few minutes. But the engine is so simple and outdated, you will most likely tire of it fairly quickly. However, if you are a big fan of the old baseball board games, you might
well enjoy it for nostalgia’s sake as this gives a pretty good example of what they were like.
Pros:
Cons:
|
PocketGamer.org score: |
 |
.: Game category:
Sports Games :: Reviews
Index :.
|
