Hardball III

Hardball III is the third in an old school series of baseball games. You have 28 major league teams and over 650 players to choose from. This version of the game is much better than the first two in the series because it has better colours and graphics, and sounds. You can hear the crowd jeering and cheering for their teams and it has “live” commentators. They even have AL Micheals doing the commenting and it does show him biting his nails (which I find rather amusing).

If you do not want to use their teams, you can make your own team using the over 650 players and you can even design your team’s logo. You choose five different game modes on the field, exhibition, full season, all-star, home run derby, and world series. It has an instant replay camera that you can save, edit, and create your own highlight or blooper films. You can also choose the camera view, whether it be from behind the pitcher or somewhere out on the field.
When you create your own team, you will see a picture (not a realistic image) of each player and you will get to see their stats like their batting average and home runs total, just like you would on the back of a baseball card. I did find that feature nice because it was easy to read.
With Hardball III being the third, but not final, game in this particular series, it was good for kids that were in the little leagues or who just want to play a baseball video game for fun. This is yet another game that I played on my old school computer back in the day, but I really did not find it fun. It came on a floppy disk (not the little ones either) and had copyright issues and when I installed it, it caused my computer to stall, but then all older computers had attitudes. But then again, they did not have the fast technology they have today.
Compared to baseball games of today, this game really is not the greatest, but for its time, it was great. The graphics are grainy, but again, for its time they were considered really good. Unlike other games that I have played, this game has very easy keyboard commands that you can learn quickly. Even though my experience with this game was not memorable, I do recommend this game if you like old school, non-realistic baseball games.