Bases Loaded Grade: C
- Agent J
Bases Loaded is one of those NES games that is fondly remembered.
Often times it is named as one of the best sports games on the system.
But anyone who has actually played the game recently should know that
this game’s legacy far exceeds its actual enjoyability.
Jaleco released this game in 1988 as their premiere sports title and was
one of the very first games they released for the NES. Their status as
newcomers in the NES world was made obvious to all when Jaleco placed
the name of their company on the top of the cart instead of the name of
their game. While this was annoying to gamers it was a sly move as most
automatically became aware of what company released Bases Loaded
while they remained ignorant about most of the other companies releasing
games for the NES.
At the time Bases Loaded was released there were already three other
baseball games on the NES though two of them were awful (Baseball and
Major League Baseball). Its main rival was Tengen’s R.B.I. Baseball. The
two games were seen as polar opposites: R.B.I. features cartoony players,
fast yet unrealistic gameplay and most importantly players that look like
real people. Bases Loaded features realistically rendered players (at least on the pitching/hitting screen) and tons of little touches that
add realism to the game. Unfortunately the game is incredibly slow and does not have actual Major League players. For some rea-
son that I never figured out most people preferred Bases Loaded over R.B.I. Baseball. There are a lot of great things about this game
but the insane amount of time it takes to play a game (let alone a season) just sucks a lot of that fun right out.
Bases Loaded turned out to be a great success and led to three more NES installments and three additional titles released on the
Super Nintendo. The success of Bases Loaded also led to many more sports releases by Jaleco over the lifespan of the NES
(Racket Attack, Hoops, Goal, Cyberball, Pro Sport Hockey…). Over time people figured out that the games weren’t that good and the
series (and Jaleco) quietly disappeared for many years until they made a comeback on the PlayStation 2.
Positives:
There are a lot of positives to say about Bases Loaded. As soon as you
start a game you will notice Bases Loaded’s trademark – the unique view
you get while pitching or hitting. Almost every other game features this
part from the batter’s view but in Bases Loaded you get the view from
behind the pitcher. The pitcher looks very realistic all the way down to
facial hair for some of the pitchers. You have lots of cool pitches you can
throw, the most deadly being any pitch that starts up high and sweeps
diagonally through the strike zone which ends up as a low ball. As the
batter you mainly have to watch the catcher’s mitt to decide where to aim
your swing. You can pretty much aim your bat in any direction so you have
a lot of freedom at the plate. This part of the game is very fun and the
main reason for the success of the entire Bases Loaded franchise. An-
other nice touch is the deep bench at your disposal – you have a wide
variety of pinch hitters and relievers to choose from.
There are lots of great graphical and animated touches that Jaleco added
to the game. Whenever you bring in a reliever, he rides in on a little cart –
just like they used to do before gas prices skyrocketed. This is also the
only game on the NES where players sometimes charge the mound when
they are beaned! The first time this happens you will be very excited until
you find out that your batter was ejected. Those kinds of touches give the game some serious personality and were the talk of the
playground in 1988.
While it is very disappointing that the game doesn’t feature real MLB players, Bases Loaded has some of the most memorable fake
players ever created. This is partly due to their outrageous stats (Paste has an average of .467 with 60 homers!) and partly due to the
fact that the stars are the players that will charge the mound when beaned.
It is also cool you can use a password to continue your season. According to the instruction booklet, the season lasts 132 games but
once you win 80 games the season ends and you can pat yourself on the back for having played Bases Loaded for an extreme
amount of hours.
Glaring Negatives:
Obviously the major negative for this game is that it is S-L-O-W. The main reason for this is that you are shown the scoreboard after
every single batter. Now this might not seem like a big deal but it really adds a lot of time to the game. It isn’t like you can speed
(Continued on page 25)
24 | Video Game Trader Magazine | July 2008 | www.VideoGameTrader.com
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