0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - All-Star Baseball 1997 featuring Frank Thomas

       

All-Star Baseball 1997 featuring Frank Thomas is a sport game based around Baseball and is the follow up to the 1996 release Frank Thomas Big Hurt Baseball. The game was developed and published by Acclaim Entertainment and released on the 30^th of June 1997 in Europe and North America, the game also received a Sega Saturn release.

The game features several modes including exhibition matches, full season, playoff, all-star, batting practice and home run derby. The games also features all 28 Major League Baseball teams as well as the Tampa Bay and Arizona squads, those two teams officially joining the Major league in 1998. As well as featuring the real MLB teams all the real players are present along with stats and stadiums as well as the teams logos

During the course of Season mode the game keeps track of a total of 27 different statistical categories, the player is also able to trade player from their team during the season, the game has play by play commentary from sportscaster Jon Miller.

Sports game based around Baseball no story or story mode present

Not a huge abundance of review with five in total as usual lets start with the best which is a 70/100 review from PSX Nation who were not really down on this game saying if you already own Triple Play 98 and are looking for another baseball gave give it a try, but other wise the game is not worth the money.

GameSpot again like PSX Nation were fairly dismissive of the game in their 65/100 review, their review conclusion reading, With so many baseball games coming out for the PlayStation this year, the battle for stickball supremacy is cutthroat. Is All-Star Baseball '97 Featuring Frank Thomas a good baseball title? Yes. Is it the best one on the market? No. Should you buy it? Sure - but only if you're buying two baseball titles this year because this game is really second best.

IGN’s review is a White Sox fan and said the following in their 50/100 review conclusion, not even Frank Thomas should have put his name on this one. With poor gameplay and below average graphics, this one is a definite out at first. All Game Guide were highly critical of the games batter/pitcher interface and lack of simulation modes, also adding arcade fans will be put off by the terrible controls in their 30/100 review.

GamePro (US) said in their 30/100 review, with Triple Play 98 available, games should avoid this diamond debacle at all cost and only indulge in this title as a rental. Heading to GameFAQs for their user ratings which do seem higher than the critics with an average user rating of 3.36/5 with a toal of 7 users rating this game.

Breaking that average down we have a good spit of ratings for this game, with 1 user rating this game a 5/5, a couple of users gave the game a 4.5/5, with an additional user scoring the game a 4.5. Another user gave the game a solid 3.5/5, there were however a couple of users that only scored the game a 1.5/5 and the lowest a 0.5/5.

Difficulty wise only 4 users rated this category with 2 of them rating the game as having just the right difficulty the other 2 users finding the game tough and easy. Average lifespan for the game has only 3 users that have rated this category with two rating the game as 4 hours lifespan, with the remaining user rating the game as 8 hours in length. Averaging out the games lifespan average is around the 5 hours mark.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit five online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com,  eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, I will also be including Ebay.com as well

So lets get down to business with Gamedude, where if you are looking to trade in your copy of the game you are looking at $5, on the other hand if you are in the market for a copy from Gamedude you are looking at $14 for a copy of the game.

Heading over to Retrogames.co.uk they sadly do not stock this title, so we head over to eStarland.com who do stock the title however at the time of writing this the game is currently out of stock. A used copy of the game from eStarland.com is usually priced at between $4.13 and $7.50, eStarland also offer a trade in and will pay up to $2.75 for a copy.

Amazon.com is next where copies of the game are on the light side and generally the used quality is pretty low, with the six used copies on sale all being acceptable in condition with all the used copies coming incomplete with prices ranging from $8 to $12. 

The one new copy that is on the market comes at a hefty price of $99.99 + $4.99 for shipping so a grand total of $104.98 this converts to £81.99 in the UK, in the Euro zone countries it comes to €88.86, while in Japan it will set you back 11440.14 Japanese Yen.

Ebay.com has a handful of used copies of the game available like Amazon, and like Amazon these are disc only copies of the game one of the copies says it is a nearly new copy but I am always weary when there is no case this copy is priced at $13.63, another couple of disc only copies are available priced at between $3.99 and $4.63.

 

Written by

P J Gibbon