Bo Jackson Baseball

Bo Jackson Baseball
Packaging for the NES version.
Developer(s)	Beam Software
Publisher(s)	Data East Mindscape
Designer(s)	Scott Orr Denny Thorley
Composer(s)	Marshall Parker
Platform(s)	NES, MS-DOS, Amiga
Release date(s)	NES: ^NA October 1990[1] MS-DOS: ^NA 1991[2] Amiga: ^NA 1992[3] ^EU 1992
Genre(s)	Sports
Mode(s)	Single-player Multiplayer (up to two players)

Bo Jackson Baseball is a baseball video game that was released for the Nintendo Entertainment System, Commodore Amiga and IBM PC-compatibles. The game features athlete Bo Jackson, who at the time of the game's release was a star in professional baseball and a former professional football player. In Europe, the game was released by Mindscape as TV Sports: Baseball, part of the TV Sports series that included TV Sports: Basketball and other games based on hockey and American football.

Gameplay

Someone has successfully hit the ball and it looks like it's going to go towards the back wall of the stadium.

An option allows the player to play anywhere from five to nine innings.^[4] Players can choose to throw five different kinds of pitches either slowly, at a normal speed, or very rapidly.^[5] Nintendo Power gave this game a 2.8 out of 5 in their September 1991 review while Electronic Gaming Monthly issued a 4.25 out of 10 review in their October 1991 issue of their magazine.^[4]

Players can either play in exhibition mode or playoff mode. Either one or two players can participate. In addition to those options, a CPU vs CPU mode and a CPU vs CPU quick mode are available in order to quicken up a tournament; the purpose is to see the stats of that particular match and quickly end tournaments. The game uses city names but not the team names because of not having any proper licensing with Major League Baseball.^[4] However, the players are purely fictional and they cannot be edited. Some of the player names are parodies of real life baseball players (such as Baltimore's "Kenrip" being a not-so-subtle parody of Cal Ripken).

There is even a cheat code that allows players to play as an all-Bo Jackson baseball team.^[6] The Commodore Amiga version includes a league mode that the NES version doesn't have.^[7] Also, the Amiga version of Bo Jackson Baseball has enhanced 16-bit graphics that are superior to the NES version.^[8]

Reception
Review scores Publication Score AllGame EGM (4.25/10) Nintendo Power (2.8/5)

Reception

Computer Gaming World stated that the IBM version of Bo Jackson was best as an arcade game and, because of its lack of real players' statistics, less successful than competitors as a simulation.^[9]

References

1. "Release information (NES version)". GameFAQs. Retrieved 2008-07-25.
2. "Release information (MS-DOS version)". GameFAQs. Retrieved 2012-01-17.
3. "Release information (Amiga version)". GameFAQs. Retrieved 2012-01-17.
4. "Additional release information". MobyGames. Retrieved 2011-03-14.
5. "Pitching information". allgame. Retrieved 2008-08-09.
6. "All-Bo Team Information". Cheat Codes Guides. Retrieved 2008-07-25.
7. "Commodore Amiga instruction manual for Bo Jackson Baseball". Lemon Amiga. Retrieved 2008-08-09.
8. "Commodore Amiga information for Bo Jackson Baseball". Abime. Retrieved 2008-08-09.
9. Rogers, Win (May 1992). "Bo Knows Arcade Baseball". Computer Gaming World. p. 59. Retrieved 24 November 2013.