8. Micro League Baseball; Micro League Sports Association

Perhaps more than any other sport, stats drive the game of baseball. Baseball is numbers. Lots of lots of numbers. Back in 1984, Micro League Baseball emerged on the scene and introduced an entire generation of kids to not only the history of baseball, but the statistical importance of the numbers of baseball. Micro League took players from the board gaming table of Statis Pro and APBA and to the Commodore 64 computer.

You could print out stats, buy general manager floppy disks (imagine doing that today) and it came ready to go with classic teams from the past. I remember that it also included a terrible Washington Senators team just to showcase how bad they were and when you played them against the ’27 Yankees with Ruth and Gehrig, it was crystal clear how terrible that Sens team was.

One last point about this amazing game—yes the graphics were less than glamorous, and a year later Hardball would grab everyone’s attention to the visual power of the C-64 but this was a manager game and not an action game but you still saw the ball being put into play. When Ted Williams hit a lazy fall ball to left center field you saw Mantle glide over to catch it. In real time—with text play by play running atop the screen. It was captivating.

Even today as we have other superb manager games available that offer mounds of data, there is still no current “text” game out there that specializes in this style of gaming. Reading text is fine, but actually showing you what is happening is something that too few text/manage games do—even to this day.

7. RBI Baseball; Tengen

You only need to see this video to appreciate how cool RBI Baseball was. Actually the sound effects were horrid (Vin Scully wasn’t included) but the game itself was another step in the evolution of the baseball game.

The game actually has roots in Japan but by the time it made its way stateside in the late 1980s, it came with real MLB players and teams – which blew people away. Actually, the game only had the player rights and not the teams so you played with Boston and not the Red Sox and you only got eight teams and not the full list, but again, in 1988 this was a huge deal to use actual stars from the real Big Leagues with a controller in your hand.

It also set the action above the field and not behind the mound like Hardball. You can make the argument that Hardball’s pitching was more fun, but the on the field gameplay in RBI blew Hardball completely out of the water and once you got a taste of it, Accolade’s game started to collect dust as a result.