Earl Weaver baseball is a classic baseball game that takes me back to my early childhood when I used to spend hours playing this awesome game. It was pretty cool to create your own rosters and teams, stadiums etc. Of course, my little league team was always one of my first choices. I spent lots of time arguing with my brother over whether the guy who bats fourth for our team really had a “10” power.
It took quite a while to create an entire team, and the urge to make a super power team was pretty great, but after all was done, the real fun began.
It’s interesting that games today are still adding more and more options for things you can do, things you can control, and different ways to interact with your team and league. It would serve them well to play EWBB for a few days and remember the game that got it right. Controlling your league, giving players rest, of course editing your roster or line-up or rotation, it was all straightforward, yet felt real, it was all the things you wanted to control. They didn’t waste time letting you fill your favourite player’s house with expensive junk…
It was slightly unfortunate that they didn’t have a MLB license, and therefore didn’t have the MLB rosters or stadiums. This meant that you had to enter
everything manually if you wanted it all to be there. This also meant that my hometown Indians where pretty much always the best team in the league, oh well, it was much more fun using the Indians to cream the Red Sox or Yankees.
In a way, I probably have a greater love for baseball today than if I would have just had all the rosters at my disposal. You seem to care much more for all the teams when you basically know every player. If some guy is slumping, you though, man that guy has 8 hitting and 7 power, what wrong with him? It made for almost a more personalized experience with all of baseball.
This game was also great because it sucked my dad in. I wasn’t really allowed to play video games during the week, but I could convince my dad to let me play by challenging him to game, he just loved dealing up that inside fastball.
EWBB is a classic game that captivated me with its straightforward game play, yet its amazing degree of control you had over everything you wanted control over. It’s a great game that should remind us of how a baseball game should be made.
