Developer: Hudson Soft Publisher: Hudson Soft
Released: August 8, 1997 4/10
Even with baseball offerings from Imagineer and Konami already on the market, and Namco coming up not long after with a new Famista title the same year, the opportunity for Hudson to carve out its niche with the first Power League release on the N64 was still there. Not opting for the cartoonish/super-deformed style, Power League 64 could still have presented a strong offering with graphics taking advantage of the hardware and a deeper, simulation-oriented style. If it were successful in this endeavor, it could even have been the groundwork for an early competitor in the west, just needing some MLB licensing to get going.
Of course, this is all a pure hypothetical of what Power League 64 could and even should have been, coming from a strong and resource-rich developer with brand recognition in Hudson Soft. Instead, Power League 64 is disappointingly basic, ugly, and unspectacular. Though it boasts a decent-looking array of 11 official stadiums, a player editor, and a pennant race mode, there just isn’t much here, with simple controls that are easy to pick up but not deep enough to keep you around for long, with the faceless blobs that comprise the player models eventually proving a fitting metaphor for what Power League brings to the table in its only N64 iteration.
