Before I found Dusty Diamond’s All-Star Softball, I had never actually played a video softball game. In fact, the only thing I knew about softball at the time was that it was a whole lot like baseball only with a bigger ball and the guys pitched underhanded instead of overhanded. Even so, it was a sports game, which I don’t normally get into so much, so I don’t really know why I decided to give this one a try. Probably because I was drawn in by the art on the back of the box or something.
It turns out that this game takes a few liberties with the game of softball.
The games you play each take place in places other than baseball stadiums, places like a schoolyard and a cliff-side. That means that the different fields not only actually look different from each other, but they have other ‘house rules’ that makes it actually worth playing on the fields. Stuff like, if the ball rolls under the fence and off the cliff, then that’s a ground-rule double. They just kind of spiced things up.
The other thing that I thought was pretty awesome was that several of the players had different abilities. Most of the folks in the game were bog-standard hoo-mans, but there were some that could, for example, walk better over rough terrain (they hopped a lot), or some that could jump in the air and float there, stuff like that. But there were others that brought odd implements with them to bat with. Brooms and spiky clubs are what I remember seeing the most. And on top of all of that the players actually looked different from each other, rather than being the same guy with a different number on his shirt, as is what you get with most other games like this.
This is actually the only sports game that I can remember that I rented more than one time on purpose. Mostly because the game was pretty silly, silly enough that I could overlook the fact that I was playing a game that was, essentially baseball, but with less rigid rules. And I can completely get behind something like that.