0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Baldies

       

Baldies known as Baldy Land in Japan on the Saturn is a real time strategy game that has seen several releases over they years since its initial release back in 1995 on the Jaguar CD. Since then the game has also appeared on MS-DOS in 1996, the same year also saw the game release on Windows, 1998 was the Sega Saturn’s turn for the game, while the Playstation would have to wait another 5 years until October 2003 for the game to release.

The game was developed by Creative Edge Software based in Scotland, as you can imagine the game with so many released has had many different publishers from Atari, Banpresto and Panasonic Interactive Media, while Mud Duck Productions would handle the eventual Playstation release

Notable people who worked on the game David Wightman and Vince Zampella both worked on this game, Wrightman as the games programmer while Zampella was one of the games producers. Zampella would later go on to be one of the founders of Infinity ward before eventually going on to found Respawn developers of the Titanfall series, Wrightman would work as a producer on Titanfall 2

Baldies is a top view real time strategy game similar to Command & Conquer and Warcraft and starts like many real time strategy games with the player starting out with a limited population in the case of this game Baldies, which are short plump bald people who are at war with the hairies who are short bearded and hairy people.

 

The simple aim of the game is to destroy every other baldy/hairy on the opposing team/teams, to do this you need to breed your baldies, there are four different kinds of Baldies to breed this is done by constructing houses which breeds the baldies, once you have build 4 large houses you can equip your Baldies with wings for an extra tactical option..

 

In addition to houses the player can construct barracks and science labs, the former is used to make bullets in the first stage while the second stage you can construct grenades, while the science lab allows the player to create various inventions to blow up, burn and drown your enemies.

 

The various types of Baldies are key to effectively defeat your enemies workers or breeders are key to building up your numbers, while scientist are key to creating new and effective weapons to use on your enemies, your soldiers are key to the defence of your baldies, while the builders are the engine room of your war operations.

This being a very late release in the Playstation 1s life cycle critic reviews for the game are none existent so we head over to GameFAQs for their user ratings. On arrival we find the game currently sitting at an average user rating of 2.85/5 from a total of 10 user ratings.

Taking a closer look at the ratings we find half have rated the game at a 3/5 with the second highest rating for the game coming in at an average 2.5/5, the remaining 3 users are split between a highly impressive 5/5 for the game, a below average 2/5 with one user rating the game as a disappointing 1.5/5 which converts to a 30 rating.

Moving on to the game difficulty we find that 6 users have rated this category with 3 of those users rating the game as having just the right difficulty level. The remaining 3 users are split evenly between the game being too easy, too tough, while 1 user found the game to have an unforgiving difficulty level. Averaging out the game comes in at a just right/tough difficulty level.

Lastly we have the games lifespan which has only seen 3 users rate this category, the lifespan rating for this game may not be entirely accurate with the users split 66% to 33% in favour of the game having a 1 hour lifespan, while the other player spent 2 hours with the game, averaging out at a 1.3 hours lifespan.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit four 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, Ebay has now been dropped unless the game is unavailable at other retailers.

So lets get down to business with Gamedude who will give you $1 if you are looking to trade in your copy of Baldies, if on the other hand you are looking to buy a copy of the game from Gamedude, you will be looking at a cost of $5.

Moving over to Retrogames.co.uk next where we find the game listed but not the Playstation version of the game, the site currently only listing the Atari Jaguar CD version of the game. So we will quickly move on to eStarland.com who have two versions of the game listed.

The first is again the Atari Jaguar CD version of the game, the second is the Playstation version, sadly both are currently out of stock. The Playstation version usual used price is between $4.68 and $8.50, significantly cheaper than the Jaguar CD version.

eStarland.com do offer a trade in for the game with eStarland offering up to $3.50 for a complete used copy of the game, this prices is contingent on the completeness of the copy with prices for a missing manual worth up to $2.28, while a missing case copy is worth up to $2.45, a disc only copy is worth just $1.22 at trade in.

Lastly we have Amazon.com where we find the game listed, however currently the game is marked as unavailable under the Mud Duck Productions release. The game is however listed as being published by Zenimax/Bethesda this version is available with a decent number of copies available.

Where we find an acceptable copy with case and manual priced up at $8.49, a good quality copy can be picked up for just 50 cents more at $8.99, while again for just 50 cents more a very good quality and like new copy can be picked up.

A good number of copies in good or better condition can be picked up in this price range, with new copies starting not much more expensive around the $11 mark. Prices for a new copy of the game do rise slightly but don’t go beyond the $18.22 mark.

Written by

P J Gibbon