Bring Back the Classic Nintendo Video Game Baseball Stars

Anyone who has ever played the video game Baseball Stars for the original 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) knows the definition of addiction. The classic baseball video game, which included teams like the American Dreams, Ninja Blacksox, Japan Robins and Lovely Ladies, was a ground-breaking video game in the realm of sports video games. Baseball Stars had memory capacity that other sports video games did not have; even if it required pressing down the reset button and then turning the NES power off to prevent losing all the data - and all your hard work. But, Baseball Stars was released in 1989, so it was technologically advanced for its' time in the video game era.

Baseball Stars offered the ability to create teams, create players and trade players. Furthermore, the game uniquely utilized a mercy rule, which meant games would end when one team was ahead by ten points - even during the middle of an inning. A walk-off homerun could be hit in the bottom of the first inning. Baseball Stars also tracked a variety of baseball statistics throughout a season. This led to competitions between fellow gamer ballplayers to outperform each other in home runs, strikeouts, hits, RBI's, stolen bases and ERA. However, the true beauty and magnificence of the sports video game involved money. Yes, money.

By winning baseball games, a team earned money. The amount of money earned would depend on the prestige of the team. Therefore, the American Dreams - consisting of legendary and Hall of Fame players such as Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Cy Young, Pete Rose and Willie Mays - earned the most money for a win. However, no matter what team you embraced as your own - whether pre-generated or user created - player's abilities could be improved and additional players could be bought by winning games and receiving money. The way money was incorporated into the game was the genius aspect to the classic Nintendo video game Baseball Stars. It has been mimicked, but not quite re-created.