zAll Star Baseball '99 Review

Publisher - Acclaim
Developer - Iguana
Platform - N64
Type - Sports
Score - 7/10

I beleive this game is one of the best baseball games ever to come. It blows away the competition, which includes Mike Piazzas, and Ken Griffey Jr. The game comes loaded with plenty of options and has enough fun to last a lifetime. But if you are a totally arcade person, then you should check out Griffey baseball first.

One of the first things that I saw that made me look twice at the game was the create-a-player option. That makes the game a whole lot more fun, and you can change just about everything on the person. You can give them beards, eye color hair color, height, and make them really good.

The sound in the game is not up to par with Griffey although it is not terrible, it gets annoying, where as Griffey has a ton of background sounds like airplanes, fire trucks, and an ocasional hot dog vendor, and that is not all. Like I said before, it isn't terrible, and they do tell the action of the game.

The graphics of this game have one word to describe them, ASTRONOMICAL! The game is run in hi- res mode and the player animations are perfect and fluid. The stadiums are absolutly rounded to their real stadium. And the crowd looks a whole lot better, the way they aren't just a 2-D looking crowd, but 3-D now! This game does and will defeat many games to come in graphics. Oh yeah, the backgrounds behind the stadiums are real to life and look exactly perfect. Such as Wrigley feild, you can see the old shops and homes that surround the great place!

The replay value of the game surprises me. I usually enjoy fast paced action games, but this game turned me on. It kept me coming back again and again for more. The exploding power of the game keeps you on the edge of your seat. The create a player gives you a lot of fun, and trying to make a winning team by trading, and buying players in the front office! I would say that I love playing the game again and again, trying to win a world series And then you get to see full game stats and reports, which include pictures, articles, and even some movies from the game to remind you of the fun you had! I have to admit though that once you master the awesome control that they have set up to pitch and hit, and once you win a world series( that takes a long, long, time) it can get a little bit ready for something new.

One last thing that surprises me is the control and player animations. The play control that they have set up is very easy to use, and can be made even easier using the com. help feilding. You can pitch and hit with ease. Such as on Griffey, the control is so hard to get down, it just made me frusterated. The player animations are amazing! They have over 500 animations, such as dives, wall catches, throws on knees, dives and rolling throws, players colliding, batters steping up to the plate do some weird things, and I saw once a player chuck his bat after striking out. But there are so many to name, and they are all perfectly lined and fluid. The crowd even gets into the game, such as if a team rallys, they will gat wilder and stand up, and a wave can even occur, although very rare.

All in all, this game is much better then the other basball games I have seen. I am sorry for you paople that love Griffey and Mike Piazzas, but they are not up to par with this game. I will give this game a whopping 9. It impressed me a lot!!