RealSports Baseball (also known as Super Baseball and simply as Baseball) is a 1982 baseball video game developed and published by Atari, Inc. for the Atari 2600. It was later launched on the Atari 5200 and 7800 machines. A version for the Atari 8-bit computers was also in development, but was cancelled. The game was developed in response to an aggressive marketing campaign by Mattel and released as part of the RealSports game series.  | | RealSports Baseball (Atari 2600) |
The Atari 5200 version of the game was positively reviewed both contemporarily and retrospectively. The game has been re-released by Atari SA who inherited the intellectual property in the game.
In this game Atari improved on Home Run, their previous baseball-themed game for the 2600 platform, by including a baseball diamond, fly-balls, throwing of the ball by fielders to tag the opposing player out, and other traditional features of the sport of baseball. Players are able to use the joystick to select the kind of swing the batter will make, with bunts, grounders, and fly-balls all possible. The 2600 and 5200 versions of the game features four variations of play, with the player able to select between single-play and two-player and between the batter being able to strike any ball or only being able to hit balls from within the strike zone. The Atari 5200 version featured the voice of an electronic announcer calling the plays.
The game was part of a series of games released under the RealSports title for the Atari 2600, including RealSports Football, RealSports Volleyball, and RealSports Soccer. The series was conceived as an answer to Mattel Electronics's aggressive marketing campaign fronted by George Plimpton, in which they compared the graphically and gameplay-wise dated Atari 2600 sports games, including Atari's 1978 baseball game Home Run, to their more advanced Intellivision counterparts.
A version with 'Voice Controller' support, an unreleased voice command device for the 2600, was announced at the 1983 Summer Consumer Electronics Show with a 1983 release date. In this version the pitching, the batting, and the fielding utilized the regular joystick, and the voice commands could be only used to throw the ball to the bases.
The originally-released RealSports Baseball included a number of software bugs that impaired the quality of play. As a result, an improved version for the 2600 platform entitled Super Baseball was subsequently released in March 1989, fixing some, but not all, of the errors. Super Baseball also included some graphical improvements.
With the launch of the Atari 5200 and Atari 7800 platforms new versions of the game were also developed for them. Jim Andreasen started to work on the 5200 version of RealSports Baseball right after he finished RealSports Football, but he later shelved the project citing burn out. After that Keithen Hayenga was assigned to finish the game, but because he wasn't satisfied with the graphics, he chose to start over the project from scratch. He was allowed to use an additional 8 kilobyte of ROM space to put in voice, and used half of it for additional game logic. Andreasen later helped to finish off the gameplay. The game was written in machine code. A version for the Atari 8-bit computers was also in development, but never released. In the years since, prototype copies of the game have become available. Atari halted the development of this version in hope that the game would sell more 5200 systems. The game was heavily used in advertisements of the system. The 5200 version is the first video game with voice, and doesn't require a separate add-on for the voice synthesis.
Despite the significantly improved graphics hardware of the Atari 7800, the 7800 version of the game features downgraded graphics and sounds compared to the 5200 version. It also has more limited gameplay and is generally buggier.
The cover art for the original 2600 release was done by Michel Allaire, whilst that for the 5200 release was drawn by D. Smith. Warren Chang created the interior artwork used in the manuals of both the 2600 and 5200 editions. The game's 1982 television advertising campaign was fronted by Oakland Athletics manager Billy Martin. More details about this game can be found on Wikipedia.org. |
 This version of RealSports Baseball was designed for Atari 2600, which was commercially very successful video game console of second generation produced by Atari from 1977 to 1992. It was the first console that used removable memory modules with games. At the time of its greatest fame, more than 30 million units of this console were sold for about $ 200 a piece. To date, the game library for this console contains nearly 1,000 original games. More information about the Atari 2600 can be found here. |
5 different online emulators are available for RealSports Baseball. These emulators differ not only in the technology they use to emulate old games, but also in support of various game controllers, multiplayer mode, mobile phone touchscreen, emulation speed, absence or presence of embedded ads and in many other parameters. For maximum gaming enjoyment, it's important to choose the right emulator, because on each PC and in different Internet browsers, the individual emulators behave differently. The basic features of each emulator available for this game RealSports Baseball are summarized in the following table:
|
