Everyone agrees that the greatest player in baseball history was Jibdec, and those who were around to see him still tell the tale. They talk about the time he hit four home runs, and they talk about the time he stole second, third and home in the first inning. But they often forget that he did all of that in the same game. They talk about his peerless hitting, power, speed and fielding. They talk about his prestige, which packed every ballpark. They talk less about his merely above-average luck, but nobody can have it all.

Advertisement

Jibdec died when my cartridge’s battery pack died back in the 1990s, but his influence lives on. He was the most talented player in baseball history, and I created him. For the 30th anniversary of “Baseball Stars,” it’s only right to honor his memory.

We should also honor the game itself. Because the Nintendo Entertainment System’s “Baseball Stars” was one of the most brilliant video games ever.

It was the Jibdec of video games, even.

“Baseball Stars” was released in 1989 by SNK for the Nintendo Entertainment System to limited expectations. It was an entry in a genre that was already littered with strong sellers, from successes like “Bases Loaded” and “R.B.I. Baseball” to duds like “Major League Baseball.” This was a pre-Madden era, before the video game industry realized there was a reliable annual market for real-life teams and rosters. It was easy to wonder what the point of yet another baseball game was.

Yet “Baseball Stars” became a seminal game, the kind that would make dorks like me talk about it three decades later, as if playing this game was a generational rite of passage, an 8-bit Woodstock that you had to experience for yourself. You should have been there, man.

It’s unrealistic to expect every subsequent generation to play or experience a 30-year-old video game the same way that they can listen to an album or watch a movie, so it’s important for me to explain why this game touched so many people. It’s important for me to explain why the game is still talked about with reverence today, and why it’s often referred to as one of the greatest sports video games of all time.

It’s important for me to explain the genius of “Baseball Stars.”

The first thing to admit is that every iteration of today’s “MLB: The Show” does almost everything that “Baseball Stars” did, only much more and much, much, much, much better. You can create players in “MLB: The Show” and give them a handlebar mustache and a skullet. You can build them into better players, improving more than two dozen skills. The graphics are freakishly close to an actual broadcast, and you can play a game against someone in Denmark or Curaçao if you want. Where “Baseball Stars” allowed players to throw three pitches, “MLB: The Show” features spot-on changeups, circle changes, vulcan changes, and palmballs among its 19 different pitch types. It’s more realistic, and it’s a higher quality baseball game by almost any standard than any other ever released.

Advertisement

But it isn’t more fun than “Baseball Stars” was.

In order to make that claim, you have to adjust for the era. This is true for just about anything. Just like Adam Ottavino would make Babe Ruth look ridiculous in 1927, and just like the worst Imagine Dragons song would have been a genre-smashing revelation if it were released in 1968, context matters. What “Baseball Stars” did right seems boring in the context of a modern, hyper-realistic sports game. In 1989, it was a pioneer.

The most obvious reasons to praise “Baseball Stars” — the team-building and role-playing aspects — wouldn’t work without the gameplay itself. Seven years before “Baseball Stars” was released, here was the console leader for the sport:

Sure, it was easy to laugh at the Atari 2600 even back in 1989, and the first baseball game for the NES was an exponential leap in comparison, but baseball video games were always an exercise in putting up with limitations. It was impossible to prevent the computer from scoring 20 runs in “Major League Baseball.” An error by the outfielder in “R.B.I. Baseball” would allow the batter and every runner to score. Controlling the fielders in “Bases Loaded” was a frustrating mess. You put up with all of these limitations.

With “Baseball Stars,” though, a grounder to short could start a double play. What looked like a double into the gap often became a double into the gap. You could throw out a stealing baserunner. It was possible not only to dive after a ground ball, but to actually get to a ball that you wouldn’t have otherwise.

It felt — more often than not — like baseball.

Not all the time, of course. A runner with 15 speed could steal with impunity, forcing a rundown and beating it every time. The best power hitters would average something like 150 home runs in a 100-game season. Pitchers couldn’t make it through five innings without getting tired, which, hey, maybe this game really was ahead of its time.

Advertisement

But it worked. The speed of the ball compared to the speed of the runners was solid, and getting that right was the theory of relativity when it came to baseball games. It was a breakthrough that made the game playable and enjoyable. Everything else was just gravy.

That everything else, though, was the reason a generation got hooked. You could create your own teams. You could create your own players. The computer kept stats for you, complete with leaderboards. More than all of this, though, was that you could create your own teams and players and help them grow. It was the marriage of “Bard’s Tale” and “Earl Weaver’s Baseball” that nobody knew they wanted. If you wanted a team of 15-speed burners, you could focus on that. If you wanted brainless thumpers, you could build a lineup that was nine deep, pitchers included. If you wanted to cheat, you just needed to answer the simple question, “When isn’t it?”

And you could name your players anything you wanted, for no good reason. Like “Jibdec.” This sort of thing really satisfied the idiot children of 1989.

This freedom turned a simple video game — something that you would play a few times when your friends came over — into a months-long event. My best friend would come over and play “Bases Loaded” during a sleepover, but “Baseball Stars” was something we planned for. Other obligations were ditched, and parent-sponsored trips to miniature golf were declined. We had to build our teams. We had to build our teams and crush each other.

Years later, I came home from college during the summer and stayed at an empty house, with my parents on vacation. I invited a half-dozen people over for college-age refreshments and “Baseball Stars,” and this lasted for an entire week. It was one of the greatest weeks of my life.

This was all unparalleled, even after the NES gave way to the Super Nintendo (SNES). Nobody was hosting parties where everyone shared a passcode for “Bases Loaded,” and they sure weren’t doing it for “Super Bases Loaded.” If there were sighing kids who still kept their own handwritten stats for the original NES “Baseball,” they aren’t remembering those times fondly now. “Baseball Stars” was a very real precursor to online gaming, in the sense that it was fine alone, but way better with a sibling, friend, or entire neighborhood.

During those “Baseball Stars” parties, I learned something: Everyone knew the same quirks, the same tricks. Even if they grew up in another state, they knew that they could make the first baseman curve a ball at a 90-degree angle at the end of an inning. They knew how to brush the computer off the plate, throw splitters that made a “BROOOOOOOO” sound, spin breaking balls that caught the corner, and blow fastballs in on their hands at a 45-degree angle. They knew the when-it-is cheat, and the hardcore ones knew the what-is-a-wren cheat. They would sneak over to their pitchers’ hitting page and increase their prestige on the cheap, even though you were sure that was your own secret.

Advertisement

They knew you didn’t mess with the American Dreams unless you’ve been working on your team for a while.

There were no secrets in “Baseball Stars” because it was an old-timey viral hit. One kid would leave a friend’s house to go to another friend’s house, armed with information. This was how the game grew, slowly and surely.

Right before the game was released,  Nintendo Power published its first issue. Inside was an elaborate 11-page spread about the big three baseball games — “Bases Loaded,” “R.B.I. Baseball” and “Major League Baseball,” complete with a fold-out insert. In the May-June 1989 issue, there was a tiny preview for “Baseball Stars“ in a section toward the back called “Video Shorts!” It gave the upcoming game a 3.5 for graphics, play control and fun, and a 4 for challenge.

This was the only mention of the game for months. Remember that Nintendo Power was owned by Nintendo of America and more of a marketing tool than a bastion of journalism, so its job was to get you PUMPED for whatever $50 cartridge was coming down the pike. This was why “The Adventures of Bayou Billy” and “Cobra Triangle” received breathless reviews and strategy guides in the same issue, while “Baseball Stars” got a semi-official designation of “meh” from the publishing arm of Nintendo.

Nintendo Power had a power-rankings-type feature in every issue, too, and “Baseball Stars” didn’t make the top 30 for a long time, which was to be expected from a game that didn’t receive any hype. Then something happened. Starting with the November-December 1989 issue, the “Pros’ Picks” power rankings put the game 18th, between “Double Dragon” and “Contra,” two classics. By the November-December 1990 issue, the game was all the way up to 7th in the “Dealers’ Picks,” which suggests that people were actually buying it.

There was never an ad blitz, never a coordinated campaign, never a feature in Nintendo Power. It was all word of mouth. Think of this in the context of a modern AAA title like “No Man’s Sky,” which was hyped as a genre-melter before it was released, only to have limiting flaws. Think of this in the context of “Red Dead Redemption 2,” a brilliant game that cost $265 million to make. Nobody could shut up about it for a month, at least. It was really that good.

No, “Baseball Stars” was just something that burned and burned and burned, in dens and living rooms and attics and bedrooms for years.

Advertisement

Decades, even.

If you’ve gotten this far, you’ve probably been hooked for decades.

This isn’t an appeal to a younger generation to get on board with “Baseball Stars.” If you can, cool. If it doesn’t interest you, I certainly understand. Every generation will have its own version. If you’re 10 years younger than me, maybe you can wax rhapsodic about “Bushido Blade” or “Crash Team Racing” in the same way. I don’t know, I was trying to figure out how to adult when those games were going on.

But when I was a kid, there was a VCR and six movies at home. If you wanted another one, you had to walk uphill in the Bay Area snow both ways to get one from the video store. There were three TV stations, and then it was a big deal when there were four. And every kid had eight video games. Rich kids had 16, but you didn’t know any rich kids. So you had friends with eight games. You had eight games. There was some overlap, but you could trade and loan as you saw fit.

Once a kid had “Baseball Stars,” though, everyone had “Baseball Stars.” There was too much you could do with the game, regardless if you had a next-door neighbor over every day or if you played alone in your room. Everyone who played it saw the potential, and then they exercised that potential. It was the Velvet Underground of games, but it could be bought for $50 a pop at any Kay-Bee Toys.

For an imperfect game, “Baseball Stars” was sure perfect. It’s a rough slog to play just about any NES game in 2019, and playing almost any one of them for even a minute makes it hard to remember just why the console was such a big deal. But give me a middle-aged friend and a weekend in 2019, and I’ll make sure the world knows about Jibdec, or whatever Jibdec has risen out of the ashes to take his place.

This will still be true in another 30 years.

ncG1vNJzZmismJqutbTLnquim16YvK57l3Bwb2tjZH9xfZhoZ25nYG58tbTEZp6eppmqwG67xWaZmquVl66tuIysq5qqo2LBqbGMrJymoZ6WuW6%2Fz6ipratdq7alsc5mnpqllWK8p3nIrapmrJmism6tzZ1kraCVYrqwv9Nmna6mXw%3D%3D