NES box art for Little League Baseball: Championship Series, the cover of NEStalgia episode 342

342 · Little League Baseball: Championship Series

▶ Game info

VerdictSkip it

GenreSports

ReleasedJuly 1990

SeasonSeason 6

DeveloperSNK

PublisherSNK

September 13, 2024 · 38 min · transcript available

Apple Podcasts Spotify

You get your choice of 16 teams to play, eight domestic teams and eight foreign teams from Asia and Europe. In One-Player mode you play the computer in an international tournament. For Two Players, you each have a squad in the tourney. All games are seven innings long.

Our verdict: Skip it

Little League Baseball: Championship Series opens with a patriotic pledge and the claim that it's the game every kid in America loves to play. The wording covers both the sport and the cartridge, which we found clever. Mike, Sean and Joe were on this one, a couple of weeks after the softball game.

What works

It looks like baseball. The camera sits far back, the screen is uncluttered, and the players read as people in a field, not tiny cartoons. From that distance we could often tell a ball from a strike before swinging, and the ball feels like an actual object.
Controls we barely had to discuss. That means everything works. You hold the swing button and follow through, which caused some check swings until we adjusted, and then it felt good. Base running is simple, with runners sent forward or called back from the right direction on the pad. Pitching is a direction on the D-pad, and we learned it by playing blind, no manual.
Teams that are not equal. There are 16 assigned teams, states and countries, and the stats are lopsided. New York and Texas are strong, and Italy is plainly weak. We liked picking the weakest side for a challenge. You can also watch or sim the computer games.
Small extras. A bat-drop mini game decides the home team, you can set infield and outfield shifts, and getting hit by a pitch earns a little cartoon cry.

What doesn't

You can't see your fielders. The zoomed-in view has no map or markers, and the ball has a shadow while the players don't. Pop flies were nearly impossible for us to catch, because we didn't know where the left fielder was until it was too late. The computer never has that problem. This was the one thing we couldn't forgive.
The AI is easy to exploit. It throws home before first and misjudges runners. Hovering over the plate got Sean hit by four pitches in a row, scoring on all of them. In real baseball you'd have to move.
A 22-character password. We wondered what it could possibly be tracking, and were glad for save states.
Teams that are only colors and names. Korea and Japan play the same. We wanted different fields, or something to attach to besides a jersey color.

Beyond the game

SNK developed it, the same company behind Baseball Stars, though we don't think it shares that engine. Games run six innings, with up to 18 if tied. There is also a licensed Little League World Series game on Switch.

The bottom line

Skip it. All three of us said not essential. It's a slick, competent baseball game and we liked it better than the softball one, but there's too much NES baseball already and it didn't make us want to go back. Joe expects to have forgotten it by the next time Mike asks, and said so for the record.

Written from our conversation in this episode.

Click a timestamp to play from there. Landing a little off?

Auto-generated transcript. Each paragraph starts with its timestamp. Speakers are not identified.

Little League Baseball Championship Series! It's the game every kid in America loves to play!

NOSTALGIA And welcome to NEStalgia, a chronological exploration of every NES game released in North America. I'm Mike. I'm Sean. And I'm Joe. Now, is Little League Baseball, like the idea of that, is that the game that kids in America love to play? Or is it this particular video game?

Because, you know, it's saying, it's very trickily worded there, it's the game every kid in America loves to play, now, as a video game? I was going to call them out on that, but it sounds like now that you're saying this, they've covered their asses. Yes. Because I was like, you can't know that every kid in America loves to play your game before you release your game. But yeah, they're saying like, oh no, no, we meant Little League Baseball, just in general. So, clever on you. It's definitely ambiguous enough to be taken as both. Right. A classic marketing doublespeak, which transitions right into a pledge.

A pledge. This is the first time, sorry, I just, I wanted to call it out right away, but this is the first time that a, like a patriotic pledge has been put in front of me when I boot up a game. I thought it was very charming.

Well, because this is different than a game we played pretty recently. I know Sean didn't really want to see a baseball game too soon, but. No, I didn't. We did play a softball game pretty recently that had a recreational component to it. And I don't know, my days of playing Little League Baseball were pretty recreational. Um, but this is more like Little League World Series to the point where even the, the teams in the game, there's 16 of them, are like cities in America and like major countries around the world. Like it's pretty serious. And I don't know if Italy even has a Little League Baseball thing, but they do in this game. That's what I was going to ask.

Like I've seen, I've seen like a Little League World Series on TV, but it's all almost always just like the final series. And it's usually just like US first Puerto Rico or some Latin American country are does each like state get a team too? Oh yeah. So that, that's how it works is like first the Little League World Series, like does the, does like the preliminary roundup. Where the local, like let's say New York State, right?

All of the local New York teams battle it out to be like, who's going to be the representative from New York State? And then they get to become that one team that represents New York. Oh wow. And then like the 50 team face off that then becomes like, well, who's going to be the one to be Team USA? So it is pretty freaking competitive when you actually think about it. That is a lot of, that's a lot of baseball. But I was, what I didn't, you know, realize, or I don't know if this is accurate or not, but the, you know, you've got New York, you've got LA, you've got Tokyo, then you've got Canada, just Canada. Well, it's also, it's just, it's not any city, it's all states or countries.

Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, that's right. So it's not. It's not Los Angeles and it's not Tokyo. Right, that's right. It's California and Japan. It's California. Yeah. But then Canada, all of Canada, that's just, it's not provinces. I think it's just like, you know, it's America's pastime. So we get all the, we get all the teams.

Yeah, I really don't know how it works in the other countries, Joe, but I would be surprised to find out that Canada, you know, would have the same style thing where like, okay, all the provinces got to like duke it out first. Yeah. And do they have to sell the pledge? I'm saying there's a lot less, there's a lot, there's probably a lot fewer people like competing to get into it in Canada because they're a hockey country and we're a baseball country. But we can also be a hockey country. In fact, when was the last time those losers even had the Stanley Cup?

Yeah, but I didn't say we're, I didn't say we're not a hockey country. I said they're a hockey country. See, but just not to go on a tangent, but I, since I got the idea in my head, I have to say it out loud now. That is the actual way to steal art from other countries is beat them so bad that you can take their trophy from them and tell them that they can have it back if they, you know, if they're willing to beat you in their preferred sport. But they continue to not do that. And meanwhile, the Mona Lisa sits comfortably in Paris, even though they did nothing sportsmanlike to get that. I appreciate your uncalled for trash talk.

But, but that's why I appreciate it. Great. So, okay, back to Little League Baseball Championship Series, which I don't think I have to say that full title every time. I think we can just say Little League from this point forward. Before we can talk about the game. Before we can talk about the game, we all, we all participated in Little League. Am I right or am I wrong? No. You are correct. Is it for my part of that? Yeah. Sean said no, but I didn't ask a, I didn't ask a yes or no question actually. No, you're correct. Sean played. I did not play. He was on my team. Sean did not play, but he was on Joe's baseball team.

Sean, do you feel like you wanted to play and that your parents didn't let you play? No, I had no interest until like high school to play any kind of, any kind of team sport. This is why every city in America needs a major league baseball team because tragedies like this can happen to even good friends of ours because they just don't have. I mean, Joe, I'm, I'm curious.

How did you get into Little League baseball if there wasn't a major league baseball team around? So when you're saying Little League baseball, you said I'm like the organization of Little League. Like I played. No, I'm talking about playing. Yeah, I guess I guess I am talking a little bit about like an organization of sorts, but like I wasn't part of an organization, but not, not like, not like the low level of this Little League. I mean, I just played. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. I never traveled. Yeah. But what's your question? Like, how did I, like, where do you think I live?

We don't have baseball? Like Buffalo. Well, allegedly Sean never saw baseball until he moved to New York City. I never said that. I said that for you. You're making that up. We've got a triple A farm team here. Yeah. That's true. I went to baseball games. I just didn't care about sports until later in life. Okay. Then that's a good idea. You know, Mike, I, I'll tell you this too. I ate pizza too.

All right. That's surprising, but you didn't eat good pizza until you moved to New York, which is kind of true about it. New York has shit pizza. Buffalo has different pizza than New York City, but it's good pizza. Wait, Sean, what'd you say? What did you say? Okay. Um, so Sean, going back to your whole, like I wasn't into sports when I was a kid. Did you own sports games?

Oh yeah, but never baseball. Got it. Okay. So this is just, you have an extreme bias towards baseball. So I don't even know if you're eligible for the essential games list at this point. Well, yeah, I voted on the other baseball games. That was a softball game. So. Oh, oh yeah. The other ones before that. Well, I didn't know that. The other ones. The dozens. I didn't have that information in front of me. Now you're revealing a lot of stuff. Well, okay. If that's a, sorry, we're going to, we're going to make this personal now. If that's the case, you guys can't vote on any other sport.

That's fine. Yeah. I don't even want to show up for those. Yeah. All right. To talk about the game. There is, there is something unique about little league baseball that we haven't seen in the baseball games that we played so far. And that is that the home team is determined by a drop of the bat. And it's a little mini game. That's made up, right? That is totally made up. I've never seen that. Okay, good. What? I mean, I say totally made up, but.

Oh, you mean the drop, you've never seen like them drop the bat like that? I've never seen an umpire hold a bat out and whoever catches the closest to the nub gets to be the home team. I've never seen that in any like official capacity, but that's like, that's like, you know, that's like your pickup baseball game style. I feel like that's pretty common. Yeah. But at that point, it's like, you know, why don't you just spin the bat too? And whoever it points at, they're the home team, right?

Like it. Oh, all right. Let, let me ask you this. You're, you're, you're with your, with your friends in your backyard and you're like, oh, let's play baseball. How do you pick the home team? You draw sticks. That's a lot of sticks. You gotta get. You already have a bat right there. How many teams are there? Hold on a minute. How many, how many teams are there? When you say draw sticks, you just put two sticks and you just, you just draw one.

Well, yeah. Whoever, and whoever's got the, whoever pulls out the one bat. I'm not talking about bats. I'm talking about sticks in the yard. Oh, sticks in the yard. Whoever has the bigger sticks. For some reason I was thinking you had like a handful of sticks and you keep going until someone gets the short one. I don't know why. I was just, I was just elevating it. Yeah. No, that's funny. But I also like that we could call bat sticks around here. Yeah. That's for reserved for stickball. I'm sure we'll get an NES stickball game at some point. I can't wait. Oh, which does have its own set of rules too, actually. So there is some nuance between stickball, softball and baseball.

This is what you get when we're on our like 40th baseball game. Like what else can we talk about at this point? Well, you know what? There is actually something to talk about and it's the presentation of the same game over and over again, because yes, mechanically, this is not doing anything different. Although I do feel like the swing results in a lot more check swings than other baseball games we've played on the NES. I'm not sure what that's about.

Maybe I'm just not committing. Yeah, because you have to hold the button a lot longer. Yes. As soon as you let go of the button, he'll stop in the middle of the swing. I'm not used to that. I'm not used to like the idea that the NES has like, you know, obviously it does because we know from the jump in Super Mario Brothers, we know as early as that, that it like has a responsiveness. But I'm used to just like you press the A to do the A button thing, not like, oh, you follow through on your swing.

Right. You should. So that was cool. But I meant actually just the presentation because, you know, we've always applauded the ones that get close to the TV broadcast. But this doesn't really go for that. But what it what it misses in that I think it really made up for in terms of user interface. You get a lot of information.

Yeah. And and it's all like neatly displayed. And the picture is pushed like as if he's further back away that like it's not it's not a busy screen. I mean, you also have like all the base runners, which should probably go away if there are no base runners. It's a little information, but you have all the base runners up in the top right and you can see them and they can't lead off the base, which would be the most interesting thing to see in that camera. But it's nevertheless, it's nice to see them instead of some like small diamond with little like baseball helmets on the areas where the runners are. It is nice.

But yeah, with without them leading off, it's it feels kind of unnecessary to me. You get to see them. So, yeah, it's extraneous a bit. But I think like what what I like about this, the game's presentation in general, and it's not just like the UI.

It's the fact that this this game just feels a lot smoother to like between actually presenting all the information that it thinks you need and the the perspective not resulting in this super cartoonish, like a bunch of like tiny Mario's jumping around and actually kind of looks like people out in the field. It makes it it gives it a much different vibe like this is kind of like a sim game, even though it's not really. And I know we've talked about this in the past, but I totally agree with how smooth the game is. And I actually felt like in this particular version of baseball, I was actually able to

maybe it's because of how far back they put the pitcher. I was able to tell if things were sometimes a ball before just swinging blindly at them. So I appreciate this game on like a whole nother level for that.

But it still has that same issue with the the pop up where sometimes, you know, I'm sure if I would have played over and over again, I would have got better at it. But sometimes you just don't track the ball because the ball has a shadow, but the players don't have shadows. Well, that's a huge issue in this game. Well, you know, we I wanted to get it out of the way that I I really like the look and feel, but it's almost like they went for look and feel over utility because there's no way to track where your fielders are. You just kind of have to you just have to hope they're there or like hope you're holding down the right button because like there's even like a little like base runner like that where you're tracking your base runners.

There's almost like that mini map down there where you could just have a bunch of dots like, oh, here's where your fielders are. But that doesn't exist. You just kind of you can't see them because you're so zoomed in to get this more realistic view that you just don't have the information that you need to field correctly. Yeah, that was my biggest pet peeve by far as well, which it often is in these baseball games, especially because the computer doesn't like adjust for it either. So like when the computer is in the field, they're perfect at it because they know where they are. Yeah, but I almost could never catch a pop fly because I don't know where I don't know where my like left fielder is until it's too late.

We had a discussion on the softball episode about how many innings Little League baseball is. And I believe I wasn't speaking for this game, but I might have said seven. In this game, there are six before a winner is determined, but it can go up to as many as 18 innings for extra innings if there's a tie. And I know for a fact that that's not how it works.

You know, I know that they don't do extra innings to that extent for Little League. But apparently in like in competitive Little League baseball World Series or whatever this is championship series, it's six. And then like in regular play, it's seven. So I wonder why actually you would lose an inning for the more competitive one. But maybe, you know, that's an interesting twist, right? What if it was just one inning?

What if baseball was just each person gets three outs and they, you know, and if it's tied after two, if it's tied after the first inning, you go into the second inning, you know? And so if you're pretty far back on like in the the lineup, you might not see the you might not see the field for like a few games. Yeah, absolutely. Or, you know, this is like this is like a different version where instead of like, you know, there's five on five basketball. But then there's also, you know, even in the Olympics now they have three on three basketball like street basketball in the Olympics.

And why not for baseball? It's like, you know, it's four V I would, I would watch, I would watch three V three, like a pitcher, a catcher and one fielder. That'd be pretty cool. So I recently went to a Savannah bananas game. This didn't happen at the game that I went to. If anyone's not aware, Savannah bananas is kind of like the Harlem Globetrotters of baseball, but like they play a real game. But apparently their tiebreaker instead of extra innings is they have they have a pitcher, a batter, and then the pitcher has one fielder.

And there's one at bat and you hit the ball, you get on base or whatever. If you don't if you're not out or you don't score, then you switch. The other team now has a batter and the first team has a pitcher and a fielder. And you keep doing that until someone either scores or gets out. It's like a shootout for baseball. Well, yeah, it's insane.

I love it. That sounds great. And that's exactly my thought Joe was a shootout. But for baseball, I, yeah, all these things, guys, just MLB, give us a call, whatever you want. We, we know how to make the game more exciting for kids. We understand. We know how to take an idea that another organization has and tell you about it. I have an idea for Little League Baseball Championship Series, too, as a way to be more accessible for kids. Don't include a 22 character password system.

Like, what the heck? I'm looking at those passwords and I'm like, well, thank God I can use save states. Like, this is crazy. Is there really that much information that they have to, like, encode in that password? Like, is it tracking every stat? I don't know. I can't say with certainty. But, you know, yeah, it's not. First off, there's assigned teams. So it's not like in the softball game where you had 60 different players and you, like, picked a specific team. These are assigned teams. And while we're on the subject of assigned teams, it is kind of weird that this is a little bit close to what, like, modern sports games are like, where, you know, bad teams exist and good teams exist.

This is true here because, you know, obviously in the most recent output of MLB The Show, the Chicago White Sox are not equal to the Philadelphia Phillies, right? Like, it's just that one team is competing on a different level. And so the game, without telling the Chicago White Sox that they're like a 10 out of 100, right, will accurately score them probably closer to, like, a low 70 and the Phillies will be like a low 90, right?

In games on the NES so far, we've mostly seen that, like, the teams are the teams and they're really just there for, like, flair. They all have, like, somewhat reasonable, like, players that, you know, like, this guy excels in base running. This guy excels in hitting. In this game, it's really just, like, New York is a dominant team.

I think Texas is another dominant team. But, like, teams like Italy actually do suck. And, like, there's no getting around it when you look at the stats. Like, they just, they're bad teams. And, honestly, I kind of like it. I kind of like that there's a... I like it, too.

It's a little weird that it's kids that we're making fun of. But, you know, I'm down with it. I just know that some people may frown at laughing at children that are bad at sports. But, um, what, so I played through, like, the, like, the full tournament mode where, no, I didn't play through the full thing. But I went a couple rounds and there's the, you have a couple options where you can, like, watch the game between the computers. Or you can just sim it, which I very much appreciate. Uh, but when I would sim the game, uh, those bad teams, yeah, they wouldn't score. But they'd lose, like, nail biters, like, 1-0 or 3-2.

Um, so, it, I didn't see the same domination, uh, that you're describing. But I, maybe I just got weird with the RNG. Well, I would say it's not domination on that, like, on that kind of way. I'm talking about when you look at the actual data of the stats of the players. Like, Italy just puts together a bad team, you know, like, on paper. It's like, they just don't have the same hitting power as New York does.

That's right. Um, but, but, you know, that, I think that's a, that's a good accessibility replayability thing, too. Is, like, you know, it's a nice challenge. It's like, I'm gonna, um, I'm gonna win the championship. But as Italy this time, right? Because, like, they're the known weakest. Or, you know, uh, first time playing, who should I be? If I want to just be good at the game, it's like, well, pick New York's. If you don't think about strategy, you can just make sure you hit the ball. Which is, in NES baseball games, sometimes a hard enough challenge on its own. So what did you guys think of the, I know that we don't really talk about this with baseball games. Because it's a bit more on rails than a typical, you know, NES game.

Uh, but what did you think of the AI in this game? Um, the only thing I really noticed was kind of what I already mentioned, was that, like, they were not accounting for the same difficulties I have, like, not being able to see your fielders. But I don't really think I picked up on anything, like, specific. I think they were kind of stupid, though, on other things.

I think you could trick them on base running a lot. Not, or, like, not even, like, with squeeze plays or anything, but just, um, what was a good example? Like, if you, if you know that they are, if the guy in right field is throwing all the way to third base, right? Like, that's a long stretch. It's like, I can send back, like, the appropriate runner that I need to, or I can move forward as I please.

There's a lot of, like, just a lot of, like, it's out of their hands now, and it's obvious that they're either going to make the throw or they're not. But even weird things, like, plays to first base, I feel like they weren't, like, 100% on. Yeah, there was a lot more throwing to home before first. Yeah. I just never really see, but I think the, what I brought this up for is, is a bit more comical.

Um, I was, I, I was just screwing around, and I noticed that, oh, hit by pitch. Like, they can, there's a lot of times where it just looked like I was about to get hit by a pitch, but I didn't. So I just kept kind of, like, climbing closer and closer to the plate, and then I eventually got hit by a pitch. And I'm like, oh, that's fun, that's cute. Like, he does a weird little cartoon cry. Um, and then they move him over to base, and then I just, like, stayed there, like, hovering over the plate, and I got hit by pitch four times in a row. I scored on four consecutive hit by pitches. And just, like, are they just on rails? Like, where the, like, is it just, like, a prescribed, uh, pitch, uh.

Yeah, it's, like, determined before the game even starts. Exactly. Uh, it was just so strange, because I've never even seen that in any other, I've never seen that in any other baseball video game. And it's, uh, it's illegal in Major League Baseball play. You have to move out of the way. If the, like, you can't stand there and take the hit. It actually just counts as a strike at that point. See, I mean, that makes sense with people playing, but I guess they didn't account for that. Well, you know, Sean, this reminds me of a story about my own experience in Little League Baseball.

And, um, basically the story goes like this. Uh, kids are not, uh, athletes yet. Okay? They are athletes in training. And, uh, there comes a time where first we start with the tee ball, and then we move into, you know, coach gets to pitch to the kids, and he, like, lobs it on their hand. And then eventually, you know, one cool guy says, like, I want to be the pitcher, and he pitches.

And you maybe have, like, one or two of those guys on your entire team. But kids get gassed a lot easier, and there's a lot of pressure to be pitching when you're, like, nine years old or whatever. And so, uh, this kid on the team was the pitcher, completely spent, nobody else to go throw anymore. And the other team just realized it. And you know what they did? They stopped swinging for the rest of the game.

And they walked in until the runs came, until we basically had a four-fit. That is tough for that pitcher. That's really funny. It's, it's, it's terrible, it's a terrible story, but, like, that's what's happening here, is, like, those, those pitchers that you were up against, Sean, were just spent, and all they knew how to do was hit ya. Yeah. But there's, like, a mercy rule. Like, this game is a mercy rule. But that's, like, a real thing in Little League Baseball, right? Yeah, I think it's, um, I think it's a lot of runs, though. I think it's, like, five or seven runs. I think in this it's ten. Okay, maybe it's ten in general. Um, but, you know, that, that happened to me, too. That's a, that's a whole nother story.

I've been on every aisle of the Little League, uh, baseball. You were a pitcher? Uh, no. Uh, I didn't say position, I said aisle. Um, because I was also, you know, I actually played right field. That was, that was where my example was earlier, was if you're in right field and you throw a third base. It was, like, I, I wasn't making it. Wasn't completing that throw. That's too far. Now, I'll throw it to the second baseman for the relay. Yeah. Yeah, you gotta get cut off in there. Yeah, right, exactly.

Uh, where was I going with this? Uh, you know, since we're talking about, like, little unique features, uh, you, there's also the shift is in this game. And also now, like, a legal feature in baseball. But you can do, uh. That's crazy. Yeah, you can do an infield or outfield shift, uh, which is just, like, I don't know, pretty heads up for Little League. Yeah. You know, like, sometimes I feel like this game is more, uh, put together than, like, bases loaded was. And, and meanwhile, it's just a little bit of baseball. Yeah, it definitely wasn't, you couldn't shift in that game, right? I, I don't recall. Uh, definitely not in, like, an RBI baseball.

Yeah, absolutely. It was, it was really weird when, like, I, I pressed a button and started cycling through menus on the, uh, uh, on the pitching screen. And I'm like, oh, didn't know we were, didn't know we were chill like that.

But now having played a game where, you know, 60 different players and they all have their own little personality traits and hidden abilities and everything. To go back to New York, Texas, California, um.

Chinese Taipei. Yeah, Chinese Taipei. Japan. Nothing funny about that, by the way. I'm just laughing because Sean beat me to the punch. Um, to have just these standard teams and everything. What do you think? Like, did you miss it now? Were you hoping to have it? Was it boring to just play as New York? Like, if, if you're me, I was just playing as New York. Is this the essential games list? No, no, no. Just, just the team selection. Like, did it really feel, like, I don't know.

If it's just, if we're just talking about flavor, I think that the fact that this is still, oh, like a weird offshoot. And it's, and it's like Little League baseball. Um, now there, there wasn't enough to, there wasn't enough, like, flavor to, to make it like, oh, this, this, this looks. Like baseball.

Um, but it at least had me going in thinking, like, oh, this will be just as weird. Uh, but it really wasn't as weird. But, so yeah, if we're just going off presentation, it's a little disappointing, uh, that we're kind of back to normal here.

Yeah, I think there's a, a demographic that, that differs between the softball game and this game. Where I could see a lot of kids loving that softball game because it's fun and you got these funny characters and everything. And then I could see this, like, this age where you're like, no, this, I want to play a serious baseball game because I'm a grown up now. Or like, I'm a cool kid now. And this is, I think then you're like, well, that game's for babies. And this game is, this game is for me. The Little League World Championship is, is serious. Serious, there's real United States and, and other countries locations in here.

Yeah, this, this is a me problem probably and not a game problem. But I struggle to think of a reason I'd ever pick Korea. You know what I, not because of their stats or anything. I just, like, I don't have any attachments to that country. And so I probably just would not play as them. It's not a thing I do in video games to, it's not like, sorry. Second Street Fighter analogy in baseball games. But, like, in Street Fighter or any fighting game, you want to play as all the characters because they all behave differently. They all control differently. They all have their own special moves and everything.

That's not true of the difference between Korea and Japan in this game. And so, like, in a major league baseball thing, it is cool to, like, switch off of being the New York Mets sometimes and doing, like, the Baltimore Orioles or the Seattle Mariners or something. Because it's like, wow, those are different real life players that I know. And even if you don't know those players, like, you know the teams and everything.

Here it's like, Korea? Like, what do I know about this team? Nothing. I have no attachment to them. I'll just, I'd sooner play Texas, a state I've never been to, than Korea. If there was any kind of presentational difference aside from the jersey colors and the player names, I think it would be cool. But there isn't. It's literally just colors and names. Yeah, give us different fields.

Yeah. I actually don't know if there's any sequels and spinoffs to this direct version of Little League Baseball because there are other Little League Baseball video games. But I couldn't tell you if they're, you know, based off this one. Huh. But, like, for instance, it's still happening. No, it's still happening. Like, they're making Little League World Series baseball on Nintendo Switch. Right? And that's, like, sanctioned. That's, like, the official Little League World Series logo on it and everything.

I'd say that's good enough to call it a sequel slash spinoff. Yeah, it's a sequel that was given to a different developer to make. Do they still have the pledge? The pledge is not, you know, it's a good point, though, Sean. It is interesting that we don't usually get the pledge.

You know what's funny? Until you mentioned it earlier, Sean, I just didn't even see that pledge. Like, I saw it and just thought, oh, yeah, there's the rights and legal. Yeah. There was a, now this is its own series, but there was the Little League World Series baseball games back in, like, 2008, 2009, 2010. And you know what's funny about those? They got released in the same year that they're dated for. So, Little League World Series baseball 2008 came out in 2008. No confusion there for me. I'll always remember the year 2008 because of Little League World Series baseball 2008. I'm losing my mind.

Wasn't that conversation we had before we started recording? Or was that during the episode? No, that was during the softball episode. Oh, okay. That's why. Yeah, it's a recording conversation that everybody legally knows about, Joe. Here's what I'm saying. What if the game was released in December of the prior season? They were just getting, like, real ready.

You know, how Madden releases in, like, April or May or some shit or, like, I don't know. And the season doesn't start until September. It was like, oh, we're getting ready. We're releasing the game in December for whatever month you said. Yeah, for marketing purposes, I think that that's the right call is to release a year ahead. Yeah. But it is, there's, like, especially pre-internet, there's something weird about, like, if you're releasing a game with actual players and stuff and you release it before, like, the actual season so you don't even know, like, who was drafted and that stuff.

You're right. We may not agree on how to name the game that you're playing based on the year that it's released in. I just said you were right. Oh, thank you. Okay, so we do agree on that. And we'll have to agree on whether Little League Baseball Championship Series for the NES is on the Essential Games list. But also, we don't have to agree. Right, that's, like, one of the core rules of the Essential Games list.

I think, presentationally, there is something nice here. I did enjoy my time, again, with a baseball NES game. But I've been enjoying my time with most of these NES baseball games outside of the ones that, like, the controls are just so horrendous that that's what I talk about for the entire episode. It's a good thing when we talk about these games now and we barely talk about the controls because that means that everything works as intended.

I did bring up that thing about the swing, but to be honest, I kind of liked it. It wasn't a negative, actually. It was kind of cool that there was some motion to your swing. And I did feel like I was making good contact with the ball. And base running just worked the way I expected to now, where you can call back a runner or send a runner forward, depending on just pressing the right button in the right directional pad. It's like, great. Everything is happening.

Pitching, it's like, I don't need to read the man. I just press a direction on the D-pad and I throw the ball and I'll just learn as I go what pitches which and what works for me. That's how baseball is played, right? You just kind of learn. You just kind of Jedi mind trick it in midair. Yeah, you just kind of learn what's going on. And that's what I did for this game. I played it pretty blind and I enjoyed my blind experience with it. The reason why I'm not going to put it on the essential games list, though,

is mostly for the same reason that other NES baseball games haven't been on the essential games list, so we don't need to cover that ground too much. But just that it didn't leave me with a feeling of wanting to go back. If anything, it makes me want to go forward and play more advanced baseball video games. This is held back in time by its limitations and this is all it will ever be. So it's not going on the essential games list for me. But what about you, Sean?

Yeah, this is a very slick and competent baseball game. I don't think we really talked about physics, but the ball just feels like very ball-like and like an actual object in this game. So I really appreciate that. I think compared to softball two weeks ago, I do, you know, as a holistic game full package, I do like this better. But for the same reasons, but also the cardinal sin of not showing me where my fielders are, can't really forgive that. But yeah, same reason. Like there's too much NES baseball. And as competent as it is, it doesn't like, I'm not going to, I'm not going to like think about this game again, probably.

It's just, it was nice. So not essential. Joe. Inevitably, a day will come when Mike says to me on an episode, Joe, remember Little League Baseball? What did you think of that? Or something like that. And when that time comes, and I have obviously forgotten everything about this game, I want to record this to remind myself that this game was passable, but I'm definitely going to forget it. So not essential. Joe, you know, not for nothing, but it does prove that we can all agree on things when it comes to the essential game. We can. I just said we don't have to. We don't have to. Oh, I, uh, yeah, I'm trying to stipulate that we have to.

Mike makes us all agree. Someone help. Send help. Uh, next week, what do we got? What do you think, what do you think next week is? Baseball, it's 40, 4,000. No, no, it's every other game. What month is it? September? Is it September? Uh, yes, you're correct. Okay. That's pretty good. So you know what month it is. Joe, do you know what week it is of the year? It'll be, so it'll be the first week of September, which would be week number 42.

That's wrong. That's gotta be wrong. That's way wrong. That's like November. Way more than September. Yeah, that's way more than September. Yeah, that's October. I don't know. Just in case people, just in case people do care, um, I'll say it now. Little League Baseball Championship Series was developed by SNK, who also made Baseball Stars, and while some things online will have you believe that, um,

this is using, like, the Baseball Stars engine or something, uh, I don't believe that to be true. Uh, I think that, uh, Little League Baseball looks different enough, feels different enough, and even, like, visually is doing a lot of different things that the similarities are just more like learnings from Baseball Stars that brought them to Little League World Series.

Um, I wouldn't ask either of you two because I know you would have to really try hard, uh, to remember Baseball Stars. Yeah, that, that was another, like, make your own team, though, right? Or was it not that? Um, I don't recall it being that, but maybe you got, maybe you got a gotcha on me. Okay, yeah, if either of us are clear on it. Yeah, you could make your, you're right, you could make your own team. Okay, see, I remember bits and pieces. You're pretty good. No, I think I vaguely remember this, like, zoomed in batter's box. I have to go, I have to kill a bug that's been in my, uh, bedroom for three weeks. Oh, okay, yeah. All right, take it outside.۔

← Dusty Diamond's All-Star Softball Mad Max →

342 · Little League Baseball: Championship Series

What works

What doesn't

Beyond the game

The bottom line

More like this

More from SNK

More Sports games

Also released in 1990