In an 8-bit world full of straight forward sports simulations, one game truly dared to be different.
Dusty Diamond’s All-Star Softball was released in 1990 by the publisher Broderbund, a company that’s probably best known for the Carmen Sandiego and Mavis Beacon edutainment franchises. It’s one of the company’s only ventures into sports games. It also has nothing to do with this guy:
Just remember, kids – Dusty Diamond is a fictional softball legend who helps you win softball games somehow, and Dustin Diamond is an actor who stabbed a guy with a pen on Christmas Day four years ago.
If you’ve played Bases Loaded or RBI Baseball, you should have a good idea how Dusty Diamond’s All-Star Softball works. While it’s technically softball (and you can even play “slow pitch” if you want), it plays out more or less the same as other NES baseball games. Pitching, fielding, and baserunning are all pretty straightforward. It’s different in a few other ways, though, which make the game a lot more interesting. First of all, there are a number of different fields that each have their own quirks:
The park has benches that you can trip over, the cliff has as fence that the ball can roll under, and the school has breakable windows that turn a would-be home run into an out. I love it.
What I love most about this game, though, is its lineup of characters (seen above). This might be the most expansive lineup of characters in an NES game. Its lineup is about the size of the last Super Smash Bros., which is remarkable for any 8-bit game, and they’re all pretty unique in terms of strengths and weaknesses. Their descriptions in the manual are all super weird – here are just a couple of examples:
Tackling power and being happy are totally what you want from a softball player, right? Here are just a few of the other names this game’s characters have:
– Stan Bananzana
– Ace McFace
– Sparky Nackledrag
– Josh Bagosh
– Boris Badasov
– Flip
– Peter “Dad” LaDeude
– Slick Slickster
– Biff Whiffster
– Chuck “Can I Pay You Next Tuesday?” Silver
I swear to you that none of those are made up. On top of that, some of the characters aren’t even human – a player named Diablo is clearly some sort of demon, who uses a giant club as a bat:
Diablo hit multiple home runs for me, but he’s the slowest player imaginable, so god help you if he has to do anything else. There’s also a witch who swings with a broom, a guy who can float in the air while playing defense (an ability that is cool, but not often useful), and a bunch of other weird things. It’s as if they took an otherwise normal baseball game and just added all the bizarre things they could think up.
As with most old sports games, the AI tends to do some things well and other things incredibly poorly. You can expect your baserunners to do a lot of very stupid things (in one game, I hit into a triple play thanks to two separate baserunners making mindbogglingly stupid choices), but it at least seems to affect both teams equally. Some players seem to also be surprisingly error prone, but that can also amusingly work out in your favor. This can sometimes be frustrating, but it’s still a solid overall experience.
In the single-player mode, you form a team of whatever players you like and play a different opponent on each field. Games are just 7 innings (since it’s softball, remember), which is a nice touch – having the games be a bit shorter feels like a good difference from the norm. Winning a game on every field will let you play against a “boss” team called the Amazons, composed entirely of women. That’s also pretty cool.
I’m honestly amazed by the amount of weirdness and character packed into Dusty Diamond’s All-Star Softball – there are a lot of fun baseball games for the NES, but many of them are just so…bland. I would probably play this over just about any of them – it manages to be pretty goofy without sacrificing much in the way of quality.
This game had a smaller print run than a lot of other NES releases, and between that and its general uniqueness it’s a bit pricier than some games – a loose copy will probably cost you around $50. If you’re into older sports games, though, it’s arguably well worth the expense. There really is nothing else like it.
My next article will be the 40th (!) Retro Roulette. Holy crap! Come back for all the answers (or are they questions?) next week.