Base wars - take your place on the baseball field with robots and show your opponents how winners play.
The players in Base Wars
Base wars was published by Ultra Games, Konami's American subsidiary. They were primarily designed to circumvent Nintendo's "developers can only make five games per year" policy. At its very core, it's a baseball game. However has Base wars has much more to offer. The team consists of robots instead of humans. There are four types of robots, each with distinctly different attributes that affect their performance.
The Cyborg
The basic cyborg has humanoid legs and possesses strength, speed, and endurance. Motorbike bots (abbreviated Mcycle) have a large wheel for their lower body and are incredibly fast, albeit difficult to control in the field and of poor physical condition. Tank robots move slowly with their treads, but they can take a lot of punishment. Finally, Flybots are legless, but work with anti-gravity, and are usually balanced in their stats, although typically slightly weaker than Cyborgs. Each robot's design often determines how good they are on the field, at bat, or on the hill.
The game modes
There are two different modes: Open mode for quick one-on-one match play and Pennant mode for a larger tournament-style arrangement. You can set the number of innings in Open mode from one to nine, depending on how fast you want to go head-to-head, and you can pit between one and six teams against each other in Pennant mode. Twelve teams are available, including San Francisco, Minnesota and Boston. Two teams are editable by selecting team and player names, their positions and whether they are left or right handed. The type of robot can also be customized for each player.
the teams
Each team has their own strengths and weaknesses, but neither is technically significantly stronger than the other, so you can't just flatten every opponent. You can host a single player match against the AI, compete against a second human player, or even put both sides on CPU and watch the machines compete. It's often best played with a friend, but it can also be played against the computer, although it tends to read your pitches and usually hits at least one home run per game.
The gameplay
The game itself plays out as you would expect a baseball game to play, with a few twists. At its core, it plays fast and smoothly. The screen after a ball is hit is zoomed in a bit more than it should be, and it's not always clear which robot you're controlling to catch the ball, sometimes your fieldman has completely disappeared from the screen after the ball has landed is. Despite some moments of frustration, the game plays solidly and as expected from the sport.
The special thing about Base Wars
Now there's more too Base wars than just look like the robots. Hitting is straightforward, but pitching is a little different than other games. The pitcher shoots the ball from an arm-mounted cannon and can either fire it instantly for a weak slow ball, or hold down the pitch button to charge up and fire a super-fast ball. In Base wars , Battles are encouraged player battles, and are an integral part of the gameplay and the main reason why Base wars stands out from the rest of the virtual baseball shape.
The battles in Base Wars
Each battle takes place one on one facing the robots enlarged with a side view. However, the robots can move up and down. Both robots have a life bar that the runner must knock out of the baseman to claim his base, or vice versa for the baseman to mark the runner. The runner's life bar will always decrease up to a certain value depending on how close he was to the base before he was marked.
The points
If he's right at base, he'll only lose a few points, but if he's barely left last base, he'll lose a lot of his life bar and stand little chance against the base player. There is also another counter for the total hit points a single robot can take, which it loses either by taking base damage or by being hit by pitches. When this bar is completely empty, the robot will explode and be inoperable for the rest of the game; A team must surrender if it loses three robots in a single game.
The weapons
Each robot comes with one of seven weapons: the weak Iron Gauntlet and Hand Cannon, the much more powerful Fire Gun and Muramasa, or the incredibly powerful Laser Gun and Laser Sword capable of obliterating enemies. The latter has the limitation of draining the user's hit points when used. Then there's the interesting battle gimmick. A name for a flying fist attack that ejects and retreats. It is possibly the best weapon as it can take down the opponent with skillful use without the HP drain of laser weapons.
The special attack
Each robot has a special B Button attack depending on which model it is. Cyborgs use jump kicks and motorbikes use a flipping spin attack. Tanks charge forward and Flybots soar high to crush the enemy. Both attack buttons can be held to charge up a powerful attack. However, the most effective route to victory is a quick exchange of blows. Fights usually last a few seconds and it often comes down to who attacks first and has the more appropriate weapon. While battles aren't really complex and usually boil down to attrition, they only last a few seconds. For longer games, however, there is a shop where you can upgrade your players' weapons. This gives you a better chance against the competition. You can also purchase upgraded units for Catch (Field Speed), Shoot (Improved Pitching), Unit (Base Run Speed), Motor (Heal Rate in Combat), and Shoulder (Impact Power). You can also heal players who took damage in the previous game.
Conclusion on Base Wars
Base wars offers a reasonably familiar game for Baseball-Fans. It offers enough new elements to spice it up for those looking to play a new take on the genre. The graphics look impressive at times, with incredible detail on the robots punching and fighting. Your sprites on the field seem a bit primitive in comparison. At least you can tell what each robot is supposed to be. You can also see where the ball is, which glows when you see it above you. There are nice touches here and there, like the creepy holographic shopkeeper. There is a panning shot to a random space station. The flying ship spells out “HOMERUN” for every ball that goes out of the park. Furthermore, the sound design is par excellence for a Konami game. The main game music is lighthearted enough to capture the spirit of baseball. It is also futuristic enough to underline the atmosphere of the game. By the way, the developer of the game is Konami. Ultra Games took over publishing in 1991.
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There is more at Wiki article on Base Wars