All-Star Baseball '99

Developer: Iguana Entertainment Publisher: Acclaim

Released: May 27, 1998 Rated: E 7/10

I can confidently say that out of all of Acclaim’s efforts in the world of sports video games during their run, baseball was easily their strongest and most consistent output up until their bankruptcy in 2004. Although the first title under the All-Star Baseball label was a bit of a non-starter with so much competition on the Playstation and Saturn, retooling and setting up shop more fully with Nintendo and the N64 would go on to establish immediate success with Iguana Entertainment and Acclaim’s simulation-style focus that would permeate the company’s output throughout the genre.

Obligatory “stand for the anthem” shot from every American baseball game when you jump into a game

Though it doesn’t quite manage to hold up with flash, speed, or gimmicks to meet the pick-up-and-play preferences that players, myself included, look for when revisiting older sports titles, All-Star Baseball comes out with a palpable dedication to features, graphics, and depth that the Acclaim Sports brand always seemed to aim for, but often failed to meet with satisfying gameplay in other series like NFL Quarterback Club. You won’t get jaunty menu music, 1000-foot home-runs, or high-powered super teams (although there’s a few fun codes like big head mode that were staples of so many games from the time), but you will get a great-looking game for its time in the early half of the N64. You’ll get deep roster management, tight albeit slow control, and respectable TV-style presentation for what the N64 would have been able to achieve. That TV presentation in particular includes some decent commentary work to fill in the audio gaps that other games on the system typically didn’t offer due to hardware limitations. It’s not much in hindsight, and the lines are often both incredibly flat and repeated many times throughout a single game, but it’s highly preferable to dead air, so it gets a mention.

“Do you want to know the terrifying truth… or do you wanna see me sock a few dingers?!?”

If there’s one thing that does set All-Star Baseball apart out of the gate, and really goes the extra mile in helping it hold up in hindsight, though, it’s gotta be the visuals. Popping this in after having not played it in a very long time, I was actually stunned by the cleanliness and the detail of the graphics. Especially considering that this was still firmly in the mid-1998 era, before the Expansion Pak was even an option for improved resolution, the quality is very impressive, especially for such a heavy use of 3D. I actually had to pop it into the original hardware because I was concerned I was being gaslit by the Analogue 3D and it still impresses. With two subsequent releases and a RAM-improving accessory still on the horizon for the series, it definitely serves as a badge of honor.

“I’m gonna embarrass you, Barry.” – Todd Stottlemyer, I assume

Though there’s a ton of room for growth over the course of the series, and the competition put forth by Nintendo with their Ken Griffey Jr. titles would eclipse them with a more arcade-style focus later in the year, All-Star Baseball ‘99 puts forth a solid foundation and healthy competition for baseball supremacy that many would say they matched blow-for-blow at the time. This first entry isn’t likely to blow your mind nowadays, but baseball fans on the console would find it in their best interest to give Acclaim a shot on the diamond, even if they didn’t earn that right in other sports.

Continuing Legacy

The All-Star Baseball series was always solid, even into the next console generation where yearly releases kept them relevant. This is particularly in the early years of the GameCube when EA was focused largely on figuring out what they were doing with baseball altogether. It speaks volumes to the consistency, however, that the franchise lasted until Acclaim’s bankruptcy while their other sports franchises dropped off one by one. Their hole in the market for baseball games with Derek Jeter on the cover was immediately taken over by 2K Sports, but it’s PlayStation and their MLB The Show franchise that rules over all of baseball these days.