Midway's lost "NBA Jam" style baseball game added to MAME

[DarthMarino]

After the success of NBA Jam, Midway set out to make a baseball game with the same fast-paced, over-the-top style. They enlisted the help of Incredible Technologies since they had mastered the trackball with their Golden Tee Golf games. The trackball was eventually dropped and several other revisions were made before ultimate cancelling it. A full build of one of the trackball versions has been discovered and added to MAME.

The controls are pretty crazy. Besides the trackball, it requires 5 buttons. I made a video playing on a trackball (with an SNES controller to handle the buttons).



I've spend a decent amount of time with it. The crazy controls will mostly likely prevent anyone from enjoying it. I mapped it to a standard modern controller and it works reasonably well but it still takes some getting used to. The game is fun but but there are certainly things that could have been fixed. There is some serious "keep scores close" going on. Usually, I'll start off hot and get 9 runs in the first inning and then CPU will have a 15 run inning shortly after.

This article details the history of the game and is worth a read for fans of 90's Midway games.

https://gamehistory.org/powerupbaseball/

[wp34]

Thanks!  What version of MAME are you using with this?

[DarthMarino]

Thanks!  What version of MAME are you using with this?

I had to compile my own since they added it after 0.228. There may be a nightly build available with it. Otherwise, it will be in 0.229.

[meyer980]

Thanks for posting this! Since reading the article I was curious how soon people would starting adding it to their cabs.

[wp34]

Thanks!  What version of MAME are you using with this?

I had to compile my own since they added it after 0.228. There may be a nightly build available with it. Otherwise, it will be in 0.229.

Thanks!