Attic of the Underdogs

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Review by Porcius:

The beauty of computer baseball is that it is easy to get the numbers right. Baseball more than any other sport is game of easily seen percentages, averages and potentials. The large number of excellent baseball games compared to the dearth of good hockey or basketball games testifies to this. You would think it would be easy to do a freeware baseball game. It isn’t. Yet, Strategic Baseball Simulator is a nice, easy and relatively realistic game.

SBS offers a lot for the price. There are hundreds of available teams to choose from. Lineups are easily created and edited, and seasons can be simulated in a matter of minutes. All the data files are text files, so new teams can be created from scratch, or, from any decent baseball encyclopedia. If you want to know if the 1977 Yankees were better than the 1927 version, you can play the two teams against each other 1000 times, and see the stats afterward.

This is a freeware game, so there is no era balance system like Oldtime Baseball or APBA. All .300 hitters will hit close to their seasonal average, unless facing a deadball era team (like the 1906 Cubs) when the pitchers will stop everything. So, era by era comparisons will be more uncertain than in most professionally done games.

But this game clearly isn’t intended as a “simulation” that will settle barside arguments that may arise. This is a small, quick-playing game with as many options as a lot of pricier titles, and with more transparency. I recommend the download without reservation. Clearly a labour of love, it is also an excellent introduction to the great stars and teams of the past.

If you enjoy the game, check out Run SBS, a good site with front-end for SBS as well as other utilities for Windows.

Reviews and game data © Home of the Underdogs
Screenshots © The Good Old Days