Nintendo Entertainment System
Released in 1991 by SNK
Grade: C+
Baseball Stars II is a slight improvement from the original. It has friendly pitching-hitting dynamics, clean graphics, and advanced stat tracking, but it doesn’t do anything to alleviate its frustrating fielding woes.
Where it falls in the series
There were just two Baseball Stars games on NES and two on Neo Geo.
Praises and gripes
Baseball Stars II is certainly impressive for the NES days. It looks great, with realistic player models and plenty of sleek animations. This version adds more teams with no-nonsense names like the Houston Eagles and Denver Dragons, mostly with bad color combinations, along with four different fields, including one with blue turf!
Pitching and batting are nicely intuitive, despite the old-school “throw and steer” pitching system. The pitching-batting screen is improved from the original game. It has a nice, comfortable look.
It’s easy to make contact at the plate, putting a lot of action out in the field. The biggest strategic hurdle of the game is learning what to do in that split-second after the ball is hit. The viewpoint of the field is very tight, and the fielders are off-screen for a moment. This is generally manageable in the infield, but it can be a nightmare in the outfield, turning routine fly balls into extra-base hits. The original game had the same problem. No AI assistance, no radar diagram, just a constant strain to “sense” where your fielders are.
The rest of the game plays out fine. I like the variance of hits, the frequency of foul balls and home runs, and the speed of runners in relation to the speed of the ball. However, base hits to right field often result in the runner being gunned down at first base, which is totally unrealistic.
In my little voyage through the NES baseball game library, there were a few weeks when I was ready to crown Baseball Stars II as the best of the bunch. But as I played this game in numerous sittings, I just had too many backbreaking fielding failures that felt too far out of my control. It’s advanced as an NES game, but it’s not guaranteed fun.
Teams
Uninspired names! Awful color combos! Behold the made-up Baseball Stars II league!
- Tempe Matadors – blue hats, powder blue uniforms
- Texas Towers – blue and pink
- LA Superstars – red and white
- Chicago Fireballs – pink and red
- Oakland Knights – gray and white
- Toronto Captains – blue and mustard yellow
- Houston Eagles – red and light blue
- San Diego Samurais – red and orange
- Boston Apaches – blue and bright green
- Denver Dragons – green and white
- Nebraska Jets – hot pink and light pink
- Miami Pirates – light blue and dark gray
Published November 8, 2025