RealSports Baseball (1982, Atari 2600) by Atari

Current Any% Leaderboard (speedrun.com)

GAMES FROM THIS EPISODE OF AVGN:
–RealSports Baseball (Atari 2600)
-Football (Atari 2600)
-RealSports Football (Atari 2600)
-Super Challenge Football (Atari 2600)
-Super Football (Atari 2600)
-Basketball (Atari 2600)
-Home Run (Atari 2600)
-Super Challenge Baseball (Atari 2600)
-Ice Hockey (Atari 2600)
-RealSports Volleyball (Atari 2600)
-Boxing (Atari 2600)
-RealSports Boxing (Atari 2600)
-Tennis (Atari 2600)
-RealSports Tennis (Atari 2600)
-Grand Prix (Atari 2600)
-Math Gran Prix (Atari 2600)
-Karate (Atari 2600)
-International Soccer (Atari 2600)
-Pele’s Soccer (Atari 2600)
-Golf (Atari 2600)
-Miniature Golf (Atari 2600)

NOTE: All games considered for this episode are only for the Atari 2600, since this is a themed episode.  For example, NBA Jam and Madden are not eligible.

Sports speedruns. When I was a new speedrunner, getting into the swing of things around Twitch and Speedrun.com and the like, I laughed and scoffed at the idea. Nobody speedruns sports games, what a meme kekw LUL zomg. Of course, as time ticks away and normal speedruns bore you, you tend to get interested in the weird and obscure.

It doesn’t get much more obscure than an old Atari Sports game, and thanks to the AVGN’s Atari Sports episode I had to pick one. I picked RealSports Baseball. And honestly, I almost enjoyed this.

I should stress the “almost” part, though. If you’re looking for a classic baseball game to speedrun, unless you have some nostalgic factor leading you to this game, I suggest many others, like Bases Loaded, Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball on SNES, or even RBI Baseball. This is a pretty mediocre game today, but for its’ day, I can see this being one of the better simulations out there. It’s far from great, with mediocre controls and difficult timing on the hitting. But then again, it’s Atari, what can you expect?

This was one of the easier trials. 3 attempts, one win, WR, done. I can’t recommend this to anyone, really, but it’s not the worst thing in the world.