Baseball Almost Had Its Own NBA Jam, And Now You Can Try It

Midway NBA Jam and NFL Blitz are two of the biggest sports game franchises thanks to the way they both offer fun and extravagant experiences that require little knowledge about the hobby in question. The company eventually set its sights on hockey, boxing, and even pro wrestling, but it never quite managed to pitch a baseball game in that vein. Or did you do it?

Thanks to the Video Game History Foundation, we now have a first hand look at (and ROM downloads for) Baseball Power-Up, which was in development by Midway and Incredible Technologies in the mid-1990s. After discovering a prototype of the game among the property of the late developer Chris Oberth (whose organization helps his family keep work), VGHF co-director Frank Cifaldi spoke to several former Midway and Incredible Technologies employees about what happened to Baseball Power-Up.

“[Power-Up Baseball] was supposed to be overkill and extreme and all that good ’90s stuff, ”art director Alan Noon told Cifaldi. “So the initial art style I went with was what was pretty trendy back then with similar fonts, broken fonts and a lot of paint splatter and stuff like that. That kind of look and feel worked pretty much throughout the game.

The main objective behind Baseball Power-Up was to give his own favorite US hobby NBA Jam, combining the digitized graphics and sense of humor that made Midway’s basketball game such a success with the trackball expertise of Incredible Technologies. But while the special throws and swings would have definitely set him apart from the rest of the crowd, the pace of baseball didn’t freeze with the fast-paced arcade action both studios envisioned. Baseball Power-Up as well as basketball NBA Jam.

“It was too long,” said programmer Brian Smolik. “We shortened it to maybe three innings or something. And at some point, you could buy one round at a time. And who will play a round, right? It was great if you could be there for a whole game. But it was like the length of two or three [NBA Jam games], and it’s hard for anyone to sit down.

Baseball Power-Up was tested locally in Chicago, with several cabinets being built and shipped to various arcades, but there just wasn’t a market for it. The passion for the project was there, but the developers had overlooked one important factor: how much money it would bring to the operators. Sadly, Baseball Power-Up has been canceled, and only now has it finally seen the light of day thanks to the hard work of video game historians.

Don’t forget to check out the Video Game History Foundation complete writing sure Baseball Power-Up for more details on creating this newly discovered project, plus all the files required to check it out for yourself. VGHF offers full source code and ROM downloads for Baseball Power-Up, and even helped add in-game support to an upcoming version of the MAME arcade emulator. What a useful group!