Wow, that’s the hardest I’ve laughed in a long time.
Sega Genesis
Released by Sega in 1992
Grade: C
Where it falls in the series
Sega released Tommy Lasorda Baseball in 1989, and we can call Sports Talk Baseball the sequel to that. Sega then shifted gears drastically with the completely different World Series Baseball series starting in 1994.
It’s not the first ever game to have play-by-play announcing; that honor goes to Joe Montana II Sports Talk Football, released by Sega in 1991. The announcer for both is Lon Simmons, who announced San Francisco 49er games as far back as 1958! He also called games for the San Francisco Giants, Oakland A’s, and Golden State Warriors.
“It’s time to play some ball. Minnesota takes the field. Up to bat, number five. It’s a change-up. Ball one.”
Have you ever been out somewhere, and some dude just talks at you, not with you, but at you, and you can’t get in a word, and you think he’s going to stop at some point, but then he just doesn’t stop, he just keeps going, and you’re thinking, “This guy talks like there aren’t any periods at the end of his sentences, he can’t stop to save his life, he’s still going, I haven’t spoken in ten minutes, this is just aggravating, I can’t believe I’m spending ten minutes of my life listening to this guy, HOW CAN SOMEONE EVEN TALK THIS MUCH?!”
That’s what it’s like to play this game. You want play-by-play? You got it!
But let’s get to the gameplay really fast. Ha! Fast, do you get it? No? Oh, because this game moves very fast. I hadn’t told you that yet. I got confused. Sorry, my head is still spinning from playing Sports Talk Baseball, a Sega Genesis game from 1992.
The game moves fast, okay? There’s almost no time between pitches. The pitching-batting interface is the familiar primitive-retro style, where you press a button to throw and control the ball mid-flight. The good thing this game does — in stark contrast to other old baseball games — is limit the control on pitches; curves can only curve so much, and the change-up isn’t that much slower than the fastball. No cheap ass sinkers either. It makes pitching a bit more strategic from pitch to pitch. More important, it makes batting much more fun.
Where the gameplay falls apart is in the field. Playing defense is not intuitive and not fun. The control is sluggish, which can be extremely frustrating when trying to turn a quick double play or gun down a guy stealing second base.
But anyway, this game is extremely fast. Those little moments in between the action are barely even there. It could be a double play, a home run, a pitching change, no matter what it is, you’re back in the batter’s box in a flash.
Now, what do you think happened when they took this extra fast version of retro video game baseball, and added, as the main feature that they’re going to sell, a play-by-play announcer, who, by definition, needs to say something about every play?
???
Baseball, real-life baseball, I’ll remind you, is known for being slow. That’s one reason commentators are so important in the TV and radio presentation of real-life baseball. Real-life baseball is known for players spitting and grabbing their penis, because they gotta do something while they’re waiting around. Real-life baseball is a game where, even if you pay for a ticket, you’ll casually show up late, and then disappear for 15 minutes to take a dump, because you figure there’s a good chance you won’t miss anything important.
So, what do you think happened?
The sports talk didn’t keep up with the baseball. It lags. It lags badly and constantly. That’s right. They put a lagging announcer on the fastest baseball game ever.
The announcer says something about every pitch, every hit, every throw, and every out, all in the same rhythm and tone. “It’s a change-up, hit to third base, here comes the throw, he’s out, here comes the throw, safe, the batter is number 25, it’s a fastball, strike, it’s 0 and 1.” And I mean, it’s like, way behind. It’s like watching a dumb little brat kid swinging at a 100-mph fastball. And then watching it over and over and over and over again.
And basically what happens, when I play this game, one way or another, is I just start laughing my head off. The real challenge of this game is to keep yourself together enough to focus. It’s mania trying to remember how many outs there are when you’re listening to this guy NOT EVER SHUT UP.
He even talks when you’re on the pause screen. I press pause to go to the bathroom, I come back, and the TV shouts at me, “The score is Oakland, one, Milwaukee, nothing! The runner’s on first!” followed by a cute ballpark tune and a big ovation, like some lady just took off her top in the stands.
I like to imagine what was going on at the Sega cave where this game was made. Maybe the guys programming the gameplay wanted to play a sick prank on the guys working on the sound. Maybe one of the sound guys asked for slow gameplay to help the announcer’s lines fit in nicely, but he asked in a rude kinda way, which pissed off the gameplay guys. Knowing the imaginary image of game developers in my head, it probably was just someone forgetting to pick up Burger King for someone else. Whatever. Someone knew what they were doing over there. The end result is just too absurd to be an accident.
If I can stop giggling for a second, I sincerely applaud the effort. Commentary in video games had to start somehow — even though I turn it off when I play most games.
The gameplay isn’t the worst, the graphics are cute, and it’s some quick fun. I wouldn’t seriously recommend this game, but with so many flawed baseball games on Genesis, this might actually be the best baseball game on the console.