Hardball III ReviewToday I'm taking a look at a little known game in the SNES vault. A little know game made by a little know developer who, quite frankly, was highly underrated and should have been given more credit than what they got. Now sports game fanatics will most likely identify with the Madden franchise seeing as how it's probably one of the most recognizable names in the genre for any platform. Yes Madden goes as far back as the SNES. But we're not going to look at football. No we're going to look at the great American pastime; that's right the game of baseball. Now talking baseball games for the SNES, you really have to talk about Ken Griffey Jr. Baseball because the game was amazing. However another title lurched in its overwhelming shadow and that is Hardball III.
Now first off, what happened to Hardball 1 and Hardball 2? I really don't know if these titles even exist. Was this just a marketing gimmick? Something to get the attention of little kids who think that sequels are always the better buy? So what if you hadn't played or heard of Hardball 1 or 2, there's a third one! It's bound to be awesome! On top of that, there wouldn't be a third one if the first two sucked so let's get it!
Regardless of if the prequels exist to this game or not, Hardball 3 is definitely worth taking a look at if you're a serious SNES collector or just an avid fan of old sports games. One thing that you'll notice immediately is that it looks really rough and true-to-form. Hardball 3 is all-business the whole way through but still manages to maintain a major fun factor. Another thing you'll take notice of just about immediately is that Hardball 3 has the MLBP license so you have the official players associated with each team at the time. The game features exhibition games, which are quick one-timers if you're only looking to play a single game, and features league play where you can purchase a team and play through three season modes: full, half, or short.
Hardball 3 contains a level of customization that was, as far as I know about, never seen before this as far as baseball games goes. It starts off with the simple purchase of a team. When you buy a team to use in the season play, you input your name as the team manager. But this doesn't even begin to scratch the surface of what you can do. After you purchase the team, and fiddle with the interface a bit, you'll start to realize the depth of control you have over the team. You can start by renaming the team entirely. So if you buy Cleveland (the team names are the cities that host them only since there's no MLB license), you can rename them to be the Cat Terds or something like that. Then you can go in and edit the entire team roster. Here you can rename the players, change their batting or throwing preferences, adjust stats for playing the game, and even change things like RBI, ERA, and errors for each individual player on the roster. After that, you can edit the description of the team that the game displays during information windows. Even on top of all of this, the game features a miniature built-in icon editor that works pixel-by-pixel so you can edit the team logos. You can also modify the team colors for the jerseys. After exploring all the options you have, you start to realize that by simply spending twenty minutes of time modifying a roster, you can make a team that is virtually unbeatable. The point about all of this though is that the customization is insane for a SNES title and it was something you just didn't see back then.
Cramming all of that customization into a SNES cartridge, you'd think that something would have to be compromised in one of the other areas of the game to make room for it. However Hardball 3 doesn't seem to care too much about that because the rest of the game is great. Let's talk about graphics. Once again I'm talking about another title that utilizes the advanced "Mode 7" graphics mode. Although the game doesn't push this mode to the absolute limit as with Super Mario Kart, F-Zero, or Final Fantasy 3, this is a game that applies this mode and executes it flawlessly. The player sprites look amazing. Coming in close to the action at either the pitcher's mound or home plate, the players are a rather decent size and are quite detailed for a SNES game. The details in the actual fields were achieved with some rather simple effects but the end result makes up for it. The only real problem with the graphics is the crowds in the stands. Getting a good shot at the stands reveals that the people just look like a bunch of hot dogs, hamburger buns, smeared blueberries, and a tossed salad just smashed together and smeared all across a canvas.
One thing I talk about a lot with games is music and sound. I'm a very auditory person and I love when a game has a great soundtrack. Straying from the subject at hand for a second; what I don't like is when a video game incorporates an actual soundtrack with actual songs instead of a MIDI or high-quality score (ahem... EA games anybody?). Anyway, Hardball 3 doesn't have a wide selection of tunes to go on. In fact, the game only features four tracks, one of which plays over and over and over and over and it becomes so annoying after a while that you find yourself muting the TV so you can't hear it anymore (actually there's an option to turn off the background music). The sound effects are strangely leveled a lot higher than the background music so sometimes you'll find yourself turning the volume on the TV up and down quite often. Otherwise neighbors nine blocks down will hear a "STRIKE" being called.
Now the game play aspect. As you can imagine, this is a baseball game. And as you can also imagine, the same rules that are used in the actual game are used here in Hardball 3 as well. Hardball 3 features an interesting way to play the game however. It's what I like to refer to as a pseudo-autonomous style of play. Basically, before you actually bat or pitch, you can pick which pitch to use or to walk a batter or use one of two hits, a regular or power hit. For some reason you can't bunt in this game but I'm not a big bunting fan so this doesn't upset me one bit. Before you actually bat though, you'll have to decide to use either a hit-and-run, steal, or double steal if you have plates stacked. This is the only actual time you can steal unlike other baseball games, especially ones on the NES, where you had to really cram in the button presses in time after a pitch to make players steal and then try to still hit the ball. While this does save on worrying about trying to concentrate on the pitch instead of making players steal plates, what's really annoying is trying to reverse the runner's actions. As we all know, hitting a pop-fly and it being caught requires any runners to return to their original plate at the start of the play otherwise they can be called out if the ball gets to the original plate before they do. I'm still not entirely too sure how to do it, but most of the time I have to drill into the buttons to get the runners to go back. A lot of times they run about 2/3 the way to the next plate, wait there until the ball gets caught, and then decide to run back. This almost always results in a double play, or sometimes even a triple which is retarded. The game does feature the ability to use automatic fielding but most of the time you'll want to do it yourself. Another thing that gets annoying after a while is the pitcher fatigue. Wearing your pitchers down takes almost no effort at all and this becomes a serious problem in league play. One last thing that needs mentioning, which is actually a major problem with this game, is that to continue league play requires that you utilize a password system. Not only are these passwords too long and feature too many random characters, they don't work. Trying to use the password, the game won't take it and if you shut the SNES off, you'll lose all the season data.
Overall I give the game a 7 out of 10. It's fun, it's great looking, and it's highly customizable. A working save feature would've been a nice addition to the game though and the soundtrack could have been a little better.
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