All-Star Baseball ’99

Developer: Iguana Entertainment Publisher: Acclaim

Released: May 27, 1998 Rated: E 6/10

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.

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.

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.