Baseball ROM

Also, be sure to check out Tennis.

Baseball is a Game Boy version of the Nintendo Entertainment System game of the same name. The game is based on the eponymous sport. It was released as a launch title for the Game Boy in both Japan and the United States, alongside Super Mario Land, Tetris, and Alleyway. The game’s cover in the Western release features Mario pitching a baseball, but the Japanese cover does not.

This is the first Super Mario game that involves baseball, and it is the predecessor to the Mario Baseball series, similarly to the Golf series’ relation to the Mario Golf series. Baseball was re-released on the Nintendo 3DS’s Virtual Console in 2011. There are two modes: “USA MODE,” which has English character names, and “JPN MODE” (short for Japan Mode), where the characters’ names are Japanese names.

Aside from the names of the characters, “JPN MODE” also changes how the ball speed is indicated, the display order of the ball count, and the background music played. Both modes have two teams: White Bears (referred to in-game as W-BEARS) and the Red Eagles (displayed in-game as R-EAGLES), which always bat first and pitch first respectively. Mario and Luigi both appear as pitchers in the “USA MODE,” both playing for opposite teams.

The player can control the players catching the balls out on the field, something that the NES version does not allow for. The player can opt out and allow the game to control the players in the field by not pressing any buttons, as pressing a button during this scene will let the player take control. By using the Game Link Cable, it is possible to play the game with two players.