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"Congratulations to the Arizona Diamondbacks for getting two runs off of the untouchable Mariano Rivera to win the 2001 World Series!"

OPENING STATEMENT
And they won that World Series much to the delight of almost all of the Reviewers. Steve McFadden (also known as Psycho Penguin), MMan (who sadly has had his removed from the site), Leroux (also known as Geromino 676), Bobo the Clown, Jihad, myself, and some others would be cheering, in my ‘Matt Chats,’ no less, for the Arizona hits, and yelling at Byung-Yung Kim for every Yankees score. Of course, in the 1999 World Series, the evil Bronx Bombers beat up on poor Tony Gwynn and the hapless San Diego Padres, so that’s why we are avoiding that season in this discussion. So, in honor of the D-Backs, I figured I had better give them a synopsis. And, you cannot give someone a synopsis unless there is a review to go with it. And, that would be the background besides my motivation to write this review for All-Star Baseball ‘99. New Yorkers, blame Steinbreinner, just as folks living in Cleveland chew out Art Modell, and Minnesotans make fun of Carl Pohlad at every opportunity. It is quite therapeutic. By the way, in this review I will issue a last desperate plea on behalf of all Twins fans to get rid of the Florida Marlins and the Montreal Expos instead of the Twin and the Expos. Why, you ask? Because the Twinkies have won more World Series titles than those two teams combined have even appeared in. Anyway, on to the review, and sorry for babbling on about the 2001 baseball campaign for so long.

GAMEPLAY--6
All-Star Baseball 99’s biggest competition is the Nintendo produced baseball game known as Ken Griffey Jr.’s Major League Baseball. Of course, the actual title of this game is still very much a mystery, and I have heard more than half a dozen predictions to the actual title of the Nintendo Sports baseball outing, but in this review, it will simply be known as Ken Griffey Jr.’s Major League Baseball. The aforementioned game endorsed by a certain outfielder for the Cincinnati Reds takes a much more arcade-stylized route through the base path, while Acclaim opted to have All-Star Baseball ‘99 be a pure simulation, and stay as true to the game as possible. And they did a far better job of doing that then High Heat Baseball did on the PlayStation. (The High Heat Baseball series is quite possible the worst sports game series of all time. I paid seven dollars and fifty cents for one of those games, new, and I still felt ripped off.)

The simulation route means that your style of play needs to focus more on your pitchers, rather than your hitters, to succeed. Hitting is hardly unimportant, but just make sure that you can pitch circles against teams like the Florida Marlins before you even consider starting a season. If you can pitch well, you can win, because hitting only requires a bit of strategy. This strategy is basically choose the power swing, aim slightly below where the ball is supposed to cross the plate, and swing away. Home run! Repeat as often as necessary. It may not be an automatic home run, but it is as close as you can get to an automatic home run in any baseball game ever created, on any console without a code.

GRAPHICS--9
Look at All-Star Baseball ‘99, and then look over at Ken Griffey Jr.’s Major League Baseball. The comparison makes Nintendo look like they are back on the Super Nintendo again. It is absolutely brutal how much better Acclaim’s offering looks. Everything but the hitting stances are fantastic. The player detail still has not been matched in most baseball series three years later. These players actually had faces. In the Griffey game, people had circles with two dots for eyes and a triangle for a nose. This is like a three-year-old’s finger painting next to a masterpiece look at a Japanese tea garden by Claude Monet. It is hard to even appreciate how good All-Star Baseball ‘99 looks until you see it next to its dismal looking competition.

The stadiums are also more detailed than those in All-Star Baseball ‘99’s competition. This is not because of any details that Nintendo missed. Instead, it is because of the images of everything in Acclaim’s offering are more detailed and less grainy, and more importantly, the textures are far more realistic and lifelike. Realistic textures quite possibly add more to a video game experience more than all of the other graphical elements combined. Of course, that is an exaggeration, hence the word possibly. I only said that to bring out their importance.

MUSIC--2
SOUND--4
Thankfully music is not an important part of any sports video game. But developers need to learn not to think of it as unimportant when they are composing it, because then they only give a halfhearted effort, and it shows. Acclaim’s composers wrote up some generic, horrible sounding, cloned, pep band type music in about five minutes, and we, the players of All-Star Baseball ‘99 must suffer in their laziness. That is correct, if you have ever been to a high school football game you should know exactly what to expect from the opening tunes in this baseball offering. Please discount the squeaks of clarinets in the thirty degree cold when recalling those games and their songs, as they at least rehearsed it somewhere with controlled temperature to avoid poor instrument quality. At least Acclaim gave us that respect - and we should all appreciate the little effort that they did put in! Perhaps it will motivate them to use more effort the next time around!

The sound effects are typical baseball game sounds. The crowd’s roars seem a bit muted and lethargic, but we just assumed they were at an Arizona Cardinals game. (Yes I know, the Arizona Cardinals play football.) The crack of the bat only slightly varies in strength, so when you hit a foul tip, it sounds almost exactly the same as smashing a five hundred foot home run. Also, little in game announcements and motivational tunes are not present, which would add a lot to the atmosphere of the stadiums. Acclaim just simply struck out on the audio.

CONTROL--9
The control is another area where All-Star Baseball ‘99 shines over the Nintendo Sports incarnation of America’s pastime. The inaugural Griffey game on the Nintendo 64 was filled with base running glitches, that would not call runners back to bases, would not start their steal until fifteen seconds after you commanded them to, and sometimes they would not even throw to the correct base. Acclaim thankfully for once had better bug testers than those at Nintendo did. This is a one time deal, so appreciate it. Acclaim also does a nice job utilizing the handy diamond shape of the C Buttons for throwing and base running, which is part of the reason why baseball games on the Nintendo 64 fare so much better than their competitors on the PlayStation.

The hitting interface, though not quite good as the one in the Griffey outing, is easy to get the hang of and does not detract from the game in the least bit. The pitching interface provides more options than its competition, and selecting and aiming your pitch is a breeze. (Kind of like the breeze that it will make when your fastball sails past the hitters, if you are Curt Schilling.)

FUN--8
I found Ken Griffey Jr.’s Major League Baseball more fun than All-Star Baseball ‘99. Putting a finger on the exact reason why is a struggle for me. But, this baseball simulator was still fun to play. Part of the reason for this was the lack of thought on trades. The computer would accept the trade even if you were offering Scott Stahoviak for Mark McGwire. This annoyed me quite a bit. Sure, it made it awfully easy to make an unbeatable team, but it took a lot of the strategy out of playing through a season. In the Nintendo Sports offering I spent hours trading my way into a master line-up, not three minutes. I also would have really liked to have seen a Franchise Mode in All-Star Baseball ‘99, as that would have made the game substantially more fun. Of course, I do not recall having ever played a baseball game with a Franchise Mode, so it would also get points for innovation, which once again does not happen all that often, so appreciate it.

CHALLENGE--LOW
All-Star Baseball ‘99 is one of the easiest sports games to come around in a long time. Strike one on the game is the lack of difficulty settings. Strike two is how insanely easy it is to hit a home run. (As I said before, turn on the power swing and aim slightly below the point at which the ball crosses the plate. Strike three is that the artificial intelligence is simply incompetent. The computer controlled pitchers just seemingly lob you pitches that are designed for you to hit the ball out of Camden Yards. That defeats the purpose of a simulation baseball game.

REPLAY VALUE--MEDIUM
It is a sports game for crying out loud! Of course you are going to play it more than once. Being able to customize your line-up completely, whenever you want to, probably adds some to the replay value, even though it really brings the challenge of completing a season down. Nonetheless, I finished off that season, all 162 games of it. Once you get that season down though, a sports game this old is only worth the occasional Home Run Derby, or an Exhibition game. And, if you have a newer version of any game in the All-Star Baseball series, then an edition this old is almost useless.

PROS
*The only simulation baseball game on the Nintendo 64.
*Far better graphics than its competition.
*It is a good game made by Acclaim! Shoot me now!

CONS
*Baseball becomes slower paced than a game between the Kansas City Royals and the Detroit Tigers.
*Some gamers will want more offense.
*The rest of the games made by Acclaim are still horrific.

CLOSING STATEMENT
Since this first game loss to Nintendo Sports, Acclaim has returned and given Nintendo a whipping on their own console, claiming the crown as the best baseball series on the Nintendo 64. All legacies had to start somewhere. All legacies have to end somewhere. If only the Yankee’s legacy could end right now, the world would be a better place.

OVERALL--7

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/11/01, Updated 11/11/01