Digital League Baseball
Description
Digital League Baseball is a single player, shareware, baseball simulation.
The player can select either the four major leagues of the USA, The National League East & West and the American League East & West. Having chosen a league they then choose two teams, a home team and a visiting team, select the players from the squad, decide the batting order, the pitcher, and the game starts.
This is an old game and processing power when it was developed wasn't great. As a result the game has adopted a novel approach to delivering graphics. All the action takes place on small windows that appear on the main game area. A typical sequence starts with a window opening to show the pitcher throwing the ball to the hitter. If the ball is struck it flies out of that window which promptly closes, a new one opens depicting the ball approaching a fielder who may/may not catch the ball. Often the fielder will catch the ball and immediately throw it to one of the bases so that window closes and another one opens showing whether the runner made it safely to the base or not.
When a game is over the player is shown the current league table and is invited to select another pair of teams to play each other.
The game has sound effects typical of games of this age namely blips as the ball is hit and something to simulate applause when a runner makes it home safely. There are also in-game options to change the team, substitute the pitcher, steal, bunt, view in-game stats and more.
Screenshots
Credits (DOS version)
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Reviews
Players
Average score: 3.0 out of 5 (based on 2 ratings with 1 reviews)
Boring if you don't understand the game
The Good
This is an old game and has to be judged as such. The animated graphics here are crude by today's standards but compared to other games of the period they are pretty good. They flow and they are sufficiently accurate to convey the impression of a ball being thrown or hit. The action takes place in little windows which is a cute solution to making a game like this work on the early low powered machines and it works surprisingly well. The pitcher pops up in a window and throws the ball to the hitter. The ball is struck and it flies out of the window which disappears but another takes its place as the ball approaches a fielder. They catch the ball and throw it to someone else causing their window to disappear and a new one to appear and so on.
There is sound too. It is crude and is limited to a blip when the ball is hit and a wibbly-wobbly sound to convey applause when a player gets home, but there is sound and that's what games of this period had if they had anything at all.
The game plays fluently on low powered machines. I played it using DOSBOX and due to an embarrassing mix-up with control keys I managed to reduce DOSBOX to less than thirty cycles before it dawned on me that there was a problem. The game actually plays very well at around ninety to one hundred cycles which, for many games, is wholly inadequate.
The Bad
I don't understand baseball but I opened wikipedia's baseball page in one window and gave this game a try. I found it boring.
This opinion has a lot to do with the first, and only, match I played in which the LA Dodgers slaughtered the San Diego Padres 169 - 5. If I knew more about the game I'd probably know whether this is a normal result between these teams and if not what change to make to the team to stop the carnage. As it is I've been making team changes for the past forty-five minutes with no effect.
The result is a game where I sit there hitting the ENTER key repeatedly waiting for it all to be over.
The Bottom Line
A curiosity, a blast from the past, that you'll enjoy if you understand what all the numbers mean and how to influence them to affect the outcome of the game.
DOS · by piltdown_man (238540) · 2013
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Contributors to this Entry
Game added by piltdown_man.
Game added January 1, 2014. Last modified February 22, 2023.