 I've always loved baseball video games ever since I was a kid, but I have to admit, once Ken Griffey Jr. presents Major League Baseball came out and I was able to buy it brand new, I kinda stopped paying attention to other baseball games. I mean, what can beat Griffey Baseball? Well, the answer is nothing, but as I got older, I figured out that was the wrong way to look at things. It's not about finding something better than Griffey Baseball, it's about finding something different. Finding an alternative. That's how I look at games like Super Baseball 2020. This was originally released in Japan by Neo Geo as an arcade game before it was ported to Sega Genesis and later the Super Nintendo, and just as the title implies, this is futuristic baseball. Okay, it's clearly not a realistic depiction of baseball in the year 2020, considering that's fricking next year, and we've got robots on tank dreads blasting baseballs into the stratosphere on a field with redrawn foul lines and new rules of play, yeah, maybe they should have picked a more distant year. Still, this is a fun reimagining of a traditional baseball game with all sorts of weird new stuff going on. There's two primary game modes, two player versus, and a single player season which has a password save, and there's 12 teams to choose from. You can pick between teams made up of men, women or robots, all with unique strengths and weaknesses. Now, of course, robot players are going to be stronger and faster, but they have much lower stamina than the human players, and they can break down or even fricking explode during a game. Human players have their own obvious limits, but hey, at least they don't explode, but they can come equipped with stuff like jet packs, armor, and sensors to improve hitting and fielding. That brings me to the monetary system in this game. Every little thing you do either earns you money or takes it away. Throw a strike, that's $100 you just got, get caught stealing second base, you just lost $1,000. Hit a grand slam, and you win 10 grand. You even earn money on defense, simply making outs in the field. You use this money to upgrade players during the game, and I want to stress during the game because this money does not roll over into the next game. Human players can upgrade hitting, fielding, and pitching, and upgrade to your R self-explanatory, whereas robots can only be upgraded in a very general sense, like just more power in general or more endurance so they don't go boom on you. Humans can also be upgraded into robots, which is kind of a weird touch. I feel like I'm turning the baseball equal of Captain Picard into Locutus of Borg. I should point out that some of these upgrades can be temporary, a human can exhaust themselves if they're overwork, and they can end up going back to what their original stats were. I really like all this stuff. It allows for more management and strategy in a game that, uh, inherently requires management and strategy. And by that, I mean, it's not just a throw hard and swing hard arcade-style baseball game. You gotta implement the right upgrades at the right time, and manage your money wisely. Another fun element of Super Baseball 2020 is the field. Every game takes place at what's called Cyber Egg Field, and the foul lines have been completely redrawn, so now the only foul territory is behind home plate, extending just directly behind first base and third base. In addition, the only place you can hit a home run is directly over the center field wall. Also, the stands are covered in a glass barrier, so if you hit it someplace in the stands, it'll just bounce off the glass and come rolling back onto the field. This really speeds up the pace of each game, because with less foul territory, there's more balls in play, so thanks to the field structure, it's easy to get a complete game finished in something like 12 to 15 minutes, compared to the 20 or so minutes for Griffey Baseball or longer with other baseball games. There's other quirks on the field as well, like stop zones, where the ball will come to a dead stop if it crosses over it, and jump zones, where an outfielder can jump like 75 feet into the air to try and catch a potential home run. Just bear in mind that if you do attempt to catch here, or attempt to dive anywhere else on the field, that counts as wear and tear on your player. And while we're talking fielding here, I think that's this game's biggest flaw. You can't see your fielder's position relative to the ball on the map in the lower right, so sometimes fielding can turn into a crapshoot, and that kind of sucks. I should also point out that the instruction manual for this game is super helpful because it breaks down each player's stats and ratings, so if you play this one, you'll find you're having trouble hitting, play as the American Dreams or the Battle Heroes. If pitching is giving you problems, try the Taiwan Mega Powers or the Tropical Girls. If your fielding sucks, try playing as the Mechanical Brains or the Ninja Black Sox. I really like when sports games put this much thought into a manual. It seems like it's pretty rare. Anyway, yeah, Super Baseball 2020 is a fun playthrough, especially if you like stuff like Base Wars for NES. This is kind of like the next step up from that game. Yeah, it's a little disappointing that money doesn't carry over from game to game, and the fielding can be a bit problematic, but it's a great twist on the old Baseball Formula, and the reduced file territory really helps speed up the pace of play, which is always a good thing in a Baseball game. So yeah, Griffey Baseball may be great, but Super Baseball 2020 is a fun alternative. And I want to thank you for watching, and I hope you have a great rest of your day.