THE MAKING OF WORLD SERIES BASEBALL

AIMED AT AN AUDIENCE OF GAMERS MORE USED TO FOOTBALL, CRICKET AND RUGBY, WORLD SERIES BASEBALL NEVERTHELESS STEPPED UP TO THE PLATE AND HIT A HOME RUN WITH A FUN ARCADE GAME THAT INITIALLY FRUSTRATED BUT HAD PLAYERS STRIKING OUT FOR MORE

- WORDS BY DAVID CROOKES

When Imagine Software went bust under a mountain of debt in 1984 – its troubles infamously captured on camera courtesy of a BBC documentary – it left the future of some games hanging in the balance. One of those was World Series Baseball, a half-finished sports simulation that had shown great promise. Rather than strike it off and consign it to history, however, the game was handed a lifeline.

Imagine, founded by Mark Butler and David Lawson, had sought to explore the appeal of American sports. World Series Baseball had been in production along with World Series Basketball and Ocean Software, which swooped in and bought Imagine, decided they were worth rescuing. David Collier was tasked with completing the Commodore 64 version of World Series Baseball and the creation of a Spectrum version was commissioned to a third-party developer called Platinum Productions.

“World Series Baseball was a good product and that was one of the games made available by the liquidators – there wasn’t another like it around – the graphics were very good,” Colin Stokes, Ocean’s operating manager, told Crash magazine at the time. Since Ocean wanted to retain the Imagine name, it decided World Series Baseball would be the first release under the rejuvenated brand. The idea was to release it around the summer of 1985.

The game was designed with a long and impressive list of features. It was envisaged that gamers would be able to view the entire ballpark, thereby allowing them to see all nine outfield players (who catch or field balls), the hitter (the one who whacks the ball) and any baserunners (those looking to advance from base to base and score a run). This inevitably caused a slight issue: the visuals would need to be small, making it more difficult for a gamer to see when a ball is pitched in order to bat it.