Turbolog – World Class Baseball
Welcome to the Turbolog, an ongoing series intended to educate Robot Panic readers about the Turbografx-16 and Turbo Duo library. In each entry, I’ll be giving brief information about a game in the Turbo library as well as the game’s rarity and my personal rating, both on a scale of 1-5. We’ll be working backwards alphabetically by title. If you’d like to read all the entries in the Turbolog, simply click the “Turbolog” tag below each article.
Another unlicensed sports title in the Turbo library, World Class Baseball substitutes familiar Major League Baseball teams with the Bangkok Buddhas, Tokyo Ninjas, Chicago Winds, and the Rome Togas. Amusing, yes, but this was no R.B.I. Baseball, which featured recognizable stars like Andre Dawson and Mark McGwire. Nevertheless, the game itself was an above average representation of video game baseball in the late 80s. The Pennant Mode requires players to defeat all sixteen of the team’s leagues before getting to the elusive Turbo Tigers. Most curious is the Watch Mode, which is exactly as it sounds: players sit and watch the computer face off against itself. Thrilling!
World Class Baseball looked slightly better than many of its contemporaries, but lacked the pizazz of the more popular baseball titles of the day. Unfortunately, as it’s the only baseball title on the console, Turbo gamers weren’t left any choice if they wanted to go nine innings.
Rarity/Cost (1-5): * There’s a good chance your local retro game shop has a stack of World Class Baseball HuCards lying around. These things are everywhere, and you should never have to pay more than $5 for a copy.
Rating (1-5): ** World Class Baseball isn’t a bad game by any means. It just wasn’t that great in its day and hasn’t aged very well over time. But if you’re jonesing for a simple old-school baseball game, you could certainly do worse.
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Tags: Sports, turbografx-16, turbolog, world class baseball
April 3rd, 2009 at 9:40 am
Actually, we used to play this game a LOT back in the day. It was much better than “Tommy Lasorda’s Baseball” on the Genesis, and it actually plays really well. The game that dethroned this one was Ken Griffey on the SNES.
April 3rd, 2009 at 9:47 am
Absolutely. Not a bad game by any means. It’s just tough for these things to age well and it didn’t do much to stand out back in the day.