Tony La Russa Baseball

Tony La Russa Baseball

Cover art for Tony La Russa's Ultimate Baseball.
Developer(s) Beyond Software, Inc. (now known as Stormfront Studios)
Publisher(s)

Strategic Simulations, Inc. (Tony La Russa's Ultimate Baseball and Tony La Russa Baseball II) Maxis (Tony La Russa Baseball 3 and Tony La Russa Baseball 4)

Electronic Arts, Inc. (Tony La Russa Baseball and Tony La Russa Baseball '95)
Composer(s) Jerry Martin
Platform(s)

Commodore 64 (Tony La Russa's Ultimate Baseball) Sega Genesis (Tony La Russa Baseball and Tony La Russa Baseball '95)

MS-DOS (all except the Genesis titles.)

Microsoft Windows (Tony La Russa Baseball 4)
Release date(s) 1991
Genre(s) Sports
Mode(s) Single player, Two player, Computer vs. Computer

Tony La Russa Baseball is a baseball computer and video game console sports game series (1991-1997), designed by Don Daglow, Michael Breen, Mark Buchignani, David Bunnett and Hudson Piehl and developed by Stormfront Studios. The game appeared on Commodore 64, PC, and Sega Genesis, and different versions were published by Electronic Arts, SSI and Stormfront Studios. The artificial intelligence for the computer manager was provided by Tony La Russa, then manager of the Oakland Athletics and later the St. Louis Cardinals. The game was one of the best-selling baseball franchises of the 1990s.

The game was based on the baseball simulation methods Daglow evolved through the Baseball mainframe computer game (1971) (the first computer baseball game ever written), Intellivision World Series Baseball (1983) and Earl Weaver Baseball (1987).

TLB refined many of the simulation elements of Earl Weaver Baseball, and introduced a few "firsts" of its own:

The first version of La Russa, Tony La Russa's Ultimate Baseball, was released almost exactly twenty years after the first playable version of Baseball went live at Pomona College in 1971.

Games

Reception

Computer Gaming World in 1991 praised Tony La Russa's Ultimate Baseball's VGA graphics, and concluded that the game "packs a tremendous amount into a single box".[1] A 1992 review by the same author of expansion disks was less favorable. It praised the accuracy of a recreation of the 1990 Major League Baseball season, but criticized the incomplete rosters. The magazine stating that the game "still falls short of its potential ... TLRUB may be a bit closer to the "ultimate" with these disks, but it's not there yet".[2] The magazine nonetheless that year named Tony La Russa's Ultimate Baseball as 1992's best sports game.[3]

Computer Gaming World in 1993 stated that Tony La Russa Baseball 2 was especially strong in league play. Although citing several bugs and stating that the action game "is not as clean as it should be", the magazine concluded that "this is quite simply the best baseball game on the market".[4]

A reviewer for Electronic Gaming Monthly gave La Russa Baseball '95 a 70%, commenting that "The controls for the pitcher and the batter need some work. Animations of players are neat, but they slow down a bit. An okay revision from last year."[5]

See also

References

  1. Rogers, Win (November 1991). "Great "A's" Baseball". Computer Gaming World. p. 104. Retrieved 18 November 2013.
  2. Rogers, Win (August 1992). "SSI's Expansion Disks for "Tony La Russa's Ultimate Baseball"". pp. 80,82. Retrieved 3 July 2014.
  3. "CGW Salutes The Games of the Year". Computer Gaming World. November 1992. p. 110. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
  4. Poulter, Wallace (June 1993). "Strategic Simulations Puts Tony La Russa Baseball 2 in the Big Leagues". Computer Gaming World. p. 24. Retrieved 7 July 2014.
  5. "La Russa '95". Electronic Gaming Monthly (Ziff Davis) (63): 164. October 1994.
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