Super Baseball

Name:	Super Baseball
Company:	Atari
Model #:	CX-26152
Programmer:	Joseph Tung (RS Baseball)
Year:	1988
Released?	Yes
Notes:	Super Baseball is an update to RealSports Baseball

Atari was always the master of repackaging, and Super Baseball is a prime example.  If Super Baseball looks familiar it should, SBB is nothing more than a cleaned up version of RS Baseball.  Why Atari decided to recycle the decidedly so-so RS Baseball for this 1988 release is unknown, but the results were disastrous.  What Atari really needed was a completely new game, but then again Atari Corp. always was known for doing everything on the cheap...

Although they may look identical, Super Baseball has actually been slightly enhanced over RS Baseball.  The players are now mono-colored, but their animation is much smother and they look a bit more human (although not much).  The blocky playfield looks exactly the same, except the dirt is now a darker color (well that alone is worth $40 to me!).  The computer AI has also been beefed up ever so slightly, so now the player cannot win games by simply stealing bases (give that a try in RS Baseball some time).  Several bugs in the gameplay were also fixed such as accidentally throwing the ball over the head of the fielders (an annoying bug from RS Baseball).  

Unfortunately for all the minor flaws that were fixed in Super Baseball, several others were left in.  The players move painfully slow when they walk out onto the field or round the bases (baseball is slow enough, do we really need to make it worse?), the gameplay is still flawed (hit balls tend to go to the same spots over and over again), and the graphics (while updated) are still ugly (especially for 1988!).  Super Baseball is just another dud in a long line of poor 2600 sports games.  

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