World Series Baseball |
Sega 32X |
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Review by Matt Paprocki |
Sega |
Sports |
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Graphics: 5 |
Sound: 4 |
Gameplay: 6 |
Overall: 5 |
Deion Sanders holds the distinction of being the only professional athlete to score a touchdown and hit a homerun in one week. He's also the only professional player in video game history to endorse two completely separate sports titles (this game and NFL '98 on the Genesis). That doesn't make the games any better, but it's nice to have that tucked away just in case you land on Jeopardy and Alex Trebek brings it up.
This is a fairly realistic representation of the game, which means it moves very slowly. Pitching not only requires the player to select a type of pitch, but the location and speed as well. Batting is a bit easier with only a press of a button and a swing direction. Fielding can be put in the control of the AI, but it's not very intelligent. You'll be better off handling it yourself. Improvements here are minor and are mostly graphical. The giant batter sprite this series is known for is retained here, but it looks exactly the same no matter who the player is. It hardly looks improved from any of the Genesis version either. Stadiums feature a little more detail, but picking out the changes will require a keen eye. The only advertised improvement is a zoom-in feature that keeps a close eye on a fielder when they make a spectacular play. Oddly, it causes slowdown. Not a way to show off new hardware.
With only two baseball games on the system, it's not hard to choose. "RBI" is an absolute mess and this one is a fine game, it just takes no advantage of the added processing power. In all honestly, with the proper programming, the Genesis alone could have handled the scaling effect and likely without slowing down to a crawl. This series would really take off on the Saturn and that's how it should be played. |