I never thought it would happen to me. It's a sunny Saturday afternoon in mid-June, and I'm sitting at my Macintosh playing HardBall II — indoors. I've always been a sucker for a good computer baseball game. But is HardBall II good enough to make you forgo summer fun to play an electronic doubleheader? If you're a baseball junkie, you can lose yourself for hours in HardBall's arcade action and teamcreating, drafting, and editing features. Even if you're not a sports addict, you can boot it up and be playing a game in minutes.
For a couple of reasons, it's difficult to be too critical of HardBall II, First, among computer sports games HardBall is a legend... Second, there's a lack of highquality entertainment software for the Mac. HardBall II is by far the best Mac baseball game available, which leads to the rhetorical question "What's the second best?"
BATTER UP
HardBall II offers the vivid graphics you'd expect from Accolade, the company that set the standard for sports software. It's more fun in color, of course, but it's still enjoyable on a black-and-white compact Macintosh, such as the Classic.
While HardBall II excels at arcade action, it offers much more in terms of league-scheduling capabilities and teamcreating and editing features. The program keeps track of team statistics automatically, updating stats such as batting averages during the game. Accolade could take this approach a step further and include stats for current teams instead of the fictitious teams that come with the game.
HardBall II takes player statistics into account during the game, but it's still your skill as an arcade hitter and fielder that plays the biggest role in whether you win or lose.
As in baseball, the key to winning at HardBall II is practice. (Wind sprints are optional.) Don't expect to boot up HardBall and start scoring runs and stealing bases right off the bat. In fact, don't expect to even be competitive.
You can, however, make the learning curve for hitting and playing defense a little easier. As the manual wisely recommends, you should select the teams for your first games carefully. If you really want to hit the ground running (and scoring), choose the Sandlot Swingers for your team and the Lotsa Losers — a cast of slow, clumsy, hitless ballplayers — as your opponent. If this combination doesn't make you feel as though you're managing the '57 Dodgers, nothing will.
HardBall II offers three different perspectives for viewing the action: Pitcher, Batter, and Full Field. In Pitcher view, best for when you're in the field, you see the action from behind the pitcher's mound. Batter view, a must when you're at the plate, is a behind-the-catcher perspective, and Full Field view is a Goodyear-blimp-type shot that lets you see the whole field at once. It's the least interesting of the three views, but until you get used to catching fly balls, you may want to use it on defense. In the two other views, the screen changes after the ball is hit; unfortunately, the ball is pretty well into the outfield before you see where it's headed or where your players are.
In addition to playing the game, you also take on the role of manager. A variety of screens let you change the positioning of your fielders. For example, you can have your outfielder play straight away or shade either the left or the right side. You can have your infield play in, at double-play depth, guard the lines, or play in at the corners only. You can also create a custom alignment for your outfield and infield. One problem is that unless you're in Full Field viewing mode, you won't see your players' positions on the field. For example, more than once I changed my outfield to adjust to a left-handed hitter and then forgot to change it back when a righty came to the plate. After you get burned a couple of times, you start to remember where your fielders are.
After you tire of playing with HardBall's fictitious teams, you can personalize the game by creating your own with the software's team editor. You can make a team's skills resemble those of your favorite baseball team, or you can create a dream team. I had a great time building a HardBall team based on the tendencies of my softball team, the Fish Heads. I tried to be realistic, but there's nothing — except your conscience — to stop you from building a nearly indestructible super team.
NOT QUITE A PERFECT GAME
HardBall II has only a couple drawbacks. As noted above, the game would be more interesting if it used real teams' statistics, for one thing. For example, I'd rather have the stats for the 1990 Red Sox than stats for the hypothetical Boston Minutemen.
Then too, Accolade could have gone a step or two further to add a greater sense of authenticity overall to HardBall II. For example, you can choose from seven stadiums based on real ballparks, but the game doesn't identify Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, Candlestick Park, and so on as such — instead it lists the city in which the stadium is located.
In general, though, HardBall's drawbacks are minor. If you want to play serious defense, though, you may want to invest in a joystick. To most Mac users, the thought of a joystick plugged into the Apple Desktop Bus (ADB) is foreign, but games like HardBall may change that. In this case, a joystick is more of a necessity that a luxury. You can enjoy HardBall without a joystick, but using the keyboard makes the game a little too challenging — and playing it with the mouse is nearly impossible.
If you love baseball and the Macintosh, HardBall II is a must. It can't replace the feeling of standing on second base after a line shot in the gap or the excitement of box seats at Fenway — but when you're not outside playing or watching the real thing, step up to your Mac and take a few cuts with HardBall II.
Muse, Dan. (September 1991). HardBall II. inCider/A+. (pgs. 32, 60-61.).
Distinctive Software
Games
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2014-04-14 / 
2023-04-27 / 
e9d4687ff14ff8e610550966b07fa218fa320757 / 
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hardball2.zip
Emulating this? It could probably run under: 
Basilisk II
