Portable Baseball

A look back at the past

Portable Baseball

If you haven’t seen it yet, this is my latest video creation, and is the reason I’ve been a bit behind on posts on this blog:

And, of course, this isn’t the only big video I’ve got coming out this week. I’ve got another one coming out this Saturday that is going to be even bigger and better than this one.

Anyway, this got me thinking about my experience with portable baseball games. And I’m interested in knowing what you guys have experienced as well.

Of course, we’re usually talking about electronic baseball games when we’re talking portability. I suppose it’s possible that you could take your APBA or Strat boards and charts and reduce them to a smaller format to take the cards along with you. Heck, even Strat has done that recently with its Barnes and Noble exclusive smaller box (which I don’t own yet):

Thank you to this Reddit thread. I’ll get a copy of this box eventually.

But it’s still going to be hard to sneak this bad boy into your backpack to take to middle school, right? Nah, I’m talking about real portable baseball gaming here.

I’m not quite old enough to remember older portable systems like this one:

I’m pretty sure I actually played Mattel Electronics Baseball at some point in time. I know I’ve played the football game somewhere, though I’m not entirely sure where.

However, by the time I was old enough to figure out ways to sneak toys and baseball stuff in to school, this bad boy was already out:

Now, I really need to go back and review all of the old baseball games for the Game Boy. Based on my limited playthrough, my recommendation for old school Game Boy baseball action would have to be Extra Bases, the English language version of Japan’s Famista:

I’m not sure what the original source is of this image, since I’ve seen the exact same image with the same price sticker on several websites.

Of course, I didn’t have that game as a kid.

The baseball game I played most frequently on the Game Boy was the port of Frank Thomas Big Hurt Baseball:

It’s been a long time since I last played that game. Based on my memory, I can tell you that the fielding system isn’t great and that hitting takes some getting used to.

I also received a copy of Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball as a gift when I was in middle school:

This was the exact same box I remember getting - in fact, I’m sure that mine has the same “New Release” sticker on it. This was near the end of the Game Boy’s life, which is why Nintendo made a big deal about it being new.

The Griffey game is painfully slow and isn’t any fun at all, as I explained in the video.

Anyway, that’s my handheld baseball experience. How about you?