Am I the only one who royally sucks at baseball games?

[Betagam7]

I don't mean to say that I'm not very good at them..I literally haven't been able to win a match in one since in over twenty years of trying (Wii sports doesn't count!)!

I'm from the UK which doesn't help and have never so much as watched a baseball game (although I played rounders as a kid) and know little about the rules or the finery of play other than the basics but every baseball game I've played I've been absolutely terrible at and can barely muster a point (they're called called points, right?)

To my knowledge I currently own the following games:

Virtual Baseball (VB)
Baseball Stars 2 (NG/Wii collection)
Baseball Stars (NGPC)
Baseball Stars Colour (NGPC)

I put nearly 2 hours into the latter tonight. I even went as far as reading the instruction manual cover to cover. I was quite good at pitching and by the end of the two hours I could get people out. I'd even finally made some runs. Yet still victory eludes me. The closest I managed was a 3-2 loss.

The batting seems to be a big problem. I always seem to hit it out or get caught out or run out. Anyway the point of this thread was really just to see if I'm alone in this problem or if it's something all non-baseball-natives face with these games.

I'm wondering if it's a sports game thing in general. Like, do some people have the same problem with football/soccer games or NFL games? Can we, as gamers do well with these games if we know nothing about the sport going into them? Is there some missing psyche needed?

I'm perplexed.

[Sarge]

Depends on the game; some are harder than others. Like Roger Clemens MVP Baseball on NES gave me fits, because the pitching is really fast for the most part. It's more realistic that way, of course.

I'm decent enough at most of them, but not spectacular. Most of it is figuring out where the sweet spot is in the swing, because each game handles collision detection a bit differently. In general, it's toward the outer-middle of the bat (the fat part), but that feels shifted a bit in some games.

Officially, a score in baseball is a "run".

Other sports, though, I could see as being a bit difficult. In general, the more realistic a sports game is, the worse I'm going to be at it. There are nuances that I don't necessarily pick up on. For instance, I'm terrible at Madden football games, even though I understand how the game works. I think I'm just hard-wired into Tecmo Super Bowl or something.

And yes, I'm generally terrible at soccer games.

[JoeAwesome]

Baseball points are called "runs" like your post states later on.

A couple of quick broad points to get you started:

-Baseball games, like most other sports games, have defined rules. If this varies because one's a simulation and another is an arcade-style game, like the Baseball Stars series is, then you have to understand that, as well.

-Unfortunately, like Pro Evo and FIFA, there's some nuances that will differ when all the rules are the same. In baseball's case, games have the camera at different angles behind the batter when batting, and possibly different angles for the pitcher when pitching. This changes the strategy a little bit because the "box" where a pitcher can pitch within to get a called strike will vary in electronic distances (but should still be within the defined rules of baseball)

[Betagam7]

I've noticed that in Baseball Stars it's possible to pitch towards one of the bases instead, the CPU does it sometimes and I figured out how to do it too.

Is there any point in this? I can see that sometimes the player will have edged forward and I'm guessing that in real baseball he can be caught out like this but it never seems to happen in the game to the point where I wonder why they included it.

I'm also a little confused about why when one of my men is caught out the CPU can then throw the ball to the other bases and get any other players out as well. Is it because they started there run or something?

I figured out how to do Timeouts and select the superstar player who got his own flashy entrance and burned with fire...he got caught out immediately! I'm terrible at this.

[Sarge]

Yeah, that's how baseball works in both cases. You can lead off on a base, but the pitcher can throw to the base and get the runner out if they can't get back on-base. That's a pickoff.

The other one is a rule as well, if someone pops up, the runners cannot advance until the ball is caught. If they do, it's the same as a pickoff, they're tagged out if they can't get back to their base in time. This also creates some strategy with a "sacrifice fly", where a batter will hit the ball deep and high into the outfield. Once the out is made, the runner will attempt to advance to the next base or home plate. You see this with speedy runners especially.

You can also "steal" a base. I don't do it much in video game form, though. Unless things are set up just right, chances are you're going to get tagged out. The best time to do this, though, is if you happen to catch the pitcher delivering a slow pitch, giving you more time to make the next base.

[ElkinFencer10]

Maaaan, with Baseball Stars, who even cares if you win or lose? That game is bloody FANTASTIC.

[Betagam7]

Maaaan, with Baseball Stars, who even cares if you win or lose? That game is bloody FANTASTIC.

I wish I'd understood more about the Neo Geo version when I used to play it. I can understand that the Pocket Version is probably addictive in the same way as Neo Geo Cup is to football fans like me. The latter seems like a terrible game at first but it reveals itself to be so much fun once you grasp it's hidden mechanics and it really helps if you understand football (soccer for you Americans).

I'm determined to try and master this game if only because I own the B&W version which is one of the rarer NGPC games and i don't believe in owning games just for the sake of it.

[ElkinFencer10]

I'm from the UK which doesn't help and have never so much as watched a baseball game

I tried playing a cricket game one time; I know exactly how you feel. I don't even fucking know what cricket's supposed to be. It looked like an awkward hybrid of baseball and bowling. I gave up quickly and went back to game with more burningpeoplewithmonstersandcuttingtheminhalfitude.

[Ack]

Have you tried many sports games in general? I'm curious. On the NGPC, I was an enormous fan of Pocket Tennis Color, but similar tennis games on other consoles can give me a hard time, such as Super Tennis for the SNES.

[ElkinFencer10]

Basically any sports game made by SNK is going to be amazing regardless of whether or not you have any idea how the actual sport works.