NES

Base Wars - Cyber Stadium Series

Kicking off their Cyber Stadium Series, Konami has introduced Base Wars. While it is similar to baseball, the players are mechanoids and the action can get pretty rough.

Aside from the mechanized players — who retain their novelty through the first couple of games — Base Wars' main innovation is that it requires hand-to- hand combat for possession of bases on force plays (though it doesn't happen that often in the average game). During pennant races, managers can buy spare parts for their players, enhancing speed, catching ability, etc., but the resulting changes are too subtle. Most of the time Base Wars plays just like a standard, respectable, human ball game — which is a shame.

If the tedious fights were taken out of Base Wars, or if the faulty computer intelligence had been fixed, a better baseball game would have been produced. As it stands though, Base Wars is just an inferior hybrid. The concept is fun to play with for a few hours, but it quickly runs out of gas.

The characters are large but their attack controls are rudimentary at best. Cornering the other guy and bashing him in the head repeatedly is usually the best strategy. Of course, when playing against the cheap CPU you'll be lucky to get in one punch! Another annoying aspect of Base Wars is how every other hit is a freakin' homerun - enough already! Still, I enjoy the brisk pace of the game and its over-the-top action. Base Wars certainly is unique and should appeal to most arcade-minded sports fans.