Midway’s NBA Jam and NFL Blitz are two of the biggest sports game franchises, thanks to the way they both provide fun and exaggerated experiences that require little knowledge of the hobby in question. The company ended up turning its focus to hockey, boxing and even professional wrestling, but it never got to launch a baseball game in the same style. Or not?
Thanks to the Video Game History Foundation, we now have a look first hand at (and ROM downloads for) Power-Up Baseball, which was under development by Midway and Incredible Technologies in the mid-1990s. After discovering a prototype for the game among the belongings of the latest developer Chris Oberth (whose work the organization is helping his family to preserve), VGHF co-director Frank Cifaldi spoke with several former employees of Midway and Incredible Technologies about what happened to Power-Up Baseball.
“[Power-Up Baseball] it was supposed to be exaggerated and extreme and all that good stuff from the 90s, ”said art director Alan Noon to Cifaldi. “So, the initial art style I chose was what was very fashionable at the time, with broken fonts and lots of paint splashes and things like that. That kind of look worked for most of the game. “
The main objective behind Power-Up Baseball was to give America’s favorite pastime its own NBA Jam, combining the digitized graphics and sense of humor that made Midway’s basketball game a success with Incredible Technologies’ trackball experience. But while the special pitches and swings definitely set him apart from the rest of the crowd, the pace of baseball didn’t match the fast-paced arcade action the two studios envisioned. Power-Up Baseball just like basketball had in NBA Jam.
“It was very long,” explained programmer Brian Smolik. “We have shortened it to maybe three entrances or something. And at some point you can buy one inning at a time. And who’s going to throw a ticket, right? It would be great if you could be there for an entire game. But that was like the length of two or three [NBA Jam games], and this is difficult for anyone to sit on. “
Power-Up Baseball it was tested locally in Chicago, with several offices being built and shipped to several arcades, but there was simply no market for it. The passion for the project was there, but the developers had overlooked an important factor: how well it would generate money for operators. Unfortunately, Power-Up Baseball has been canceled and is only now finally seeing the light of day, thanks to the diligent work of video game historians.
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Be sure to check out the Video Game History Foundation article full article in Power-Up Baseball for more details on how this newly discovered project was created, not to mention all the files needed to verify it yourself. VGHF is offering full source code and ROM downloads for Power-Up Baseball, and even helped add support for the game in a future version of the arcade emulator MAME. What a helpful group!