Base Wars (NES) Playthrough

A playthrough of Ultra's 1991 baseball game for the NES, Cyber Stadium Series: Base Wars.

This video shows a two game pennant played as San Francisco. The games I played in are at the beginning and end of the video. From 57:50 - 6:38:17, the AI is playing against itself. The ending begins at 7:47:53.

Standing as the sole title in the ill-fated "Cyber Stadium Series," Konami's Base Wars marries the traditional rules of America's favorite pastime with the destructive potential of mechanized superhumans.

At the turn of the 24th century, American baseball team owners are fed up paying the astronomical salaries demanded by even the worst players on their teams. The board eagerly embraces one owner's suggestion to replace all human players with (comparatively cheap to build and mantain) fighting baseball robots, and thus, the Cyber League was born.

These androids bat, field, pitch, and catch in a manner similar to their human counterparts, but they're also armed and ready to wage war on one another should the opportunity arise.

Every player is one of four distinct robot types, and each has its own strengths and weaknesses. The motorcycle is weak but can quickly zip around opponents and the bases. The tank moves like molasses but hits like a Mack truck. The cyborg is the jack-of-all-trades but master of none, and the flybot is a wussy hitter but an excellent outfielder.

Base Wars‘ main draw, of course, is the combat. Tagging a runner begins a 1v1 no-holds-barred brawl, and the end result of the clash ultimately determines whether or not the runner is safe.

Fighting and getting beaned by the ball saps a robot's HP, and if a robot loses all of its HP, it'll explode in a hail of shrapnel that'll damage any other robots nearby. A team is forced to forfeit when it has lost three players in the same game, so if you like to play aggressively, games will go by quickly.

If you're playing the pennant mode, you can use your winnings to repair your robots and upgrade their parts between games, and since the game has battery-backed save memory, you won't need any passwords to keep track of your win record and player upgrades.

The sound and the graphics are both top notch for the NES, and are especially impressive considering the cramped confines of the game’s two megabit cartridge ROM. The bass-heavy music is peppy and upbeat, and there are a ton of digitized samples. The ump is voiced, and the robots yell and grunt and they trade blows. (I especially love how the tank yells, "Yeah!" every time he charges at someone.)

The characters in the batting view are huge and well detailed, and there are a few fun cutscenes sprinkled throughout (like when the star fighter launches to celebrate a homerun). Each of the robot type's distinct personalities are highlighted in their over-exaggerated animations, and in a comic twist, all of the players have human names. It’s hilarious to crush someone as a blue flying saucer named Daniels or to roll over someone as a pink tank named Sanders.

These details lend the game an offbeat sense of humor that gives Base Wars a way to stand out in such an overcrowded genre. The game’s vibe is similar to SNK’s 2020 Super Baseball (released just three months later), though Base Wars is arguably the better of the two games despite being on much weaker hardware.

The controls are good, too. They're intuitive, responsive, and will feel familiar to anybody who has any past experience with a baseball game.

Unfortunately, there are two major issues that mar this otherwise excellent game. First, since the overhead view is zoomed in so far, you can't see the diamond and your outfielders at the same time, and that tends to make the fielding feel a bit unfair at times. The second issue lies with how the pennant mode works: there's no option to skip matches between CPU controlled teams. You have to let every single match play out in real-time, meaning that you'll be forced to watch the game play itself for hours on end as you await your turn. I don't know if the lack of such an option was an intentional design choice or an oversight, but it is a problem that sucks the wind from the sail of the game's primary mode. It's a real shame, too, given how much the game gets right.

The gameplay is innovative, the presentation is outstanding, and for quick exhibition matches and tournaments between friends, Base Wars is a blast.

But if you want a 1P season mode, grab yourself a copy of Baseball Stars or Baseball Simulator 1.000 instead.
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No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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