All-Star Baseball 2000

Outstanding! It took me all of thirty seconds of play to recognize that I would be shelving every other PC, PlayStation and Nintendo baseball game (except perhaps Baseball Mogul) under passe. Acclaim's All-Star Baseball 2000 substantially raises the bar of virtual baseball gameplay.

Wow!

There is nothing quite like digging into the batter's box on a warm summer evening, with two out and runners on second and third. Your gut is all aflutter and you know that all of the attention in the ball park is fixed squarely on you and the pitcher. Your team is depending on you. The opposing pitcher has to face the same tensions and each of you tries to guess what the other might be thinking, settles in, tries to relax and visualizes the desired result.

All-Star Baseball 2000 captures the intensity and subtleties of that confrontation like no other baseball game. The interface bears some similarities to other games but is kicked up beyond where any other game has previously gone. The pitching interface is simple and effective. The pitcher selects a pitch and a location with a movable target that can be placed in or out of the strike zone. These big league pitchers throw serious heat and some nasty breaking balls. Controlling the pitcher, the player has very precise control over pitch location. What would have made the interface perfect is the ability to take a little off a pitch or reach back to put a little extra on a fastball. The danger of so well representing big league pitching is that you run the risk of making hitting extremely difficult. Some of the PC games like High Heat 2000 dangerously tread this line of frustrating gamers.

Fortunately, the crew at Iguana Entertainment have come up with a superlative batting interface. Each hitter has a customized batting target. Better hitters have bigger targets. Power hitters have larger sweet spots, and the target is bigger at lower skill levels. Batting is a matter of moving that batting target onto the ball and correctly timing the swing. There is a circle that appears in the strike zone where the incoming pitch is. This allows the batter to follow the incoming pitch. Once you master hitting this way, that indicator can be turned off to increase the challenge.

Added on to this hitting system is the ability to wait on a pitch and/or location. If the hitter guesses correctly, his target expands. Guess wrong and it shrinks. There is also the ability to choose between power and contact swings. This interface alone, is very good, but nothing original. Ken Griffey Baseball or the PlayStation MLB series have very similar batting systems. Where All-Star Baseball 2000 leaves the rest of the games choking on its dust is that the batting target is manipulable. You can rotate the target in to try and pull the ball, out to hit to the opposite field, up to hit a fly ball or down to keep the ball on the ground. Add to that a fantastic bunting system that includes the ability to bunt and slash. Stupendous!

The game physics are not quite accurate enough to totally exploit this unrivaled batting system. As the defensive team, you are able to shift both the infield and the outfield. If your tactic is to shift the infield and pitch outside to a batter in order to induce him to hit into the defense, it won't quite work. No matter how far outside and how fast you pitch, the batter can always pull the pitch up the baselines. The same holds true for pushing high, hard fastballs to the opposite field even when they are in on the batter's hands. These tactics will however, usually work against the computer and against an unsuspecting human opponent.

Playing the Field

Fielding in All-Star Baseball 2000 is smooth and easy to learn. The level of CPU assistance is adjustable and all of the buttons and actions are quite instinctive. It feels natural to run in with your center fielder and slide under a bloop fly ball. Diving with your shortstop is equally instinctive and some of the animations are show stopping. Pushing off the wall to get the extra few feet to steal a home run, over the head catches on the run, quick stabs by the third basemen, etc. The replays can be phenomenal.

Base running is a little less good. The animation for stopping and turning around is very slow and will cost you some outs that don't feel fair. Sliding is difficult to figure out. Once you do, you may find yourself doing it just to see the clouds of dust or base runners scrabbling to the base that they have missed with their slides. Which brings us, again, to the fantastic animations and graphics.

Get the Memory Expansion

If you didn't buy the N64 Expansion pack for Rogue Squadron, All-Star Baseball 2000 is all the reason you need to get it now. This game really takes advantage of the extended memory and plays much smoother and has better replays with the pack. The graphics and animations are excellent and, especially the night games, give the perfect feeling of playing under the lights. Most players have a reasonable facsimile of their own face. Players move incredibly realistically and the stadiums are brilliantly simulated. If you want to get really nit-picky, something isn't quite right with the ballplayers. I think it is that they look like their chests are sucked up too high, as if they were holding their breath in and trying to puff out their chests to impress the girls in the stands. All of the animations can be viewed, giving a game a broadcast feel, or at the click of a button, they are skipped and you are sent straight to the action.

The commentary is somewhat limited compared to PlayStation and PC titles, but still features a two man booth and, while limited, at least the commentary is quite accurate. Sound effects may be the biggest weakness on this cartridge. It often sounds like you are playing with a tennis ball rather than a baseball and the crowd noises are a little weak.

4 Player

That's right, four player! Why didn't someone do this sooner? Four people can divide themselves up however they wish to play All-Star Baseball 2000. 2 on 2, 1 on 3, or 4 against the computer. As well as being able to select individual levels of difficulty, each player can select the players that they wish to control or the computer will divide them up quite equally. Now, instead of just the pressure that you put on yourself to get a hit, you can have three of your friends on base with two out and the pressure is on. Stomach flutter can be a big part of All-Star Baseball 2000. We are getting very close here to recreating the actual feel of baseball in an environment where your six year old brother, your girlfriend and your athletic friend can all compete on a level playing field without anyone worrying about throwing too hard at the little brother.

Options Galore

All-Star Baseball 2000 has all of the requisite season, playoff, managerial, player creation, trading, free agent, scouting and other options. I did find the home run derby frustrating. Batters can not aim their power swings the way they can a contact swing and I hit way more home runs in game than in home run derbies. Other than my weakness at the home run derby, the extra modes and aspects of the game are also first rate. Even if they were not, the brilliant, customizable game play would still have made this my blowout baseball game of choice. As it is, the decision isn't even close.

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