| Sports Talk Baseball | |
|---|---|
North American cover art |
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| Developer(s) | Sega |
| Publisher(s) | Sega |
| Platform(s) | Sega Mega Drive/Genesis |
| Release date(s) | |
| Genre(s) | Traditional baseball simulation |
| Mode(s) | 1-2 players |
| Media/distribution | Sega Mega Drive/Genesis cartridge |
Sports Talk Baseball (released in Japan as Pro Yakyuu Super League '91) is a Mega Drive/Genesis baseball video game which features an official MLBPA license as well as most rules and aspects followed by Major League Baseball.
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Unlike real professional baseball however, the game ends when one team has 10 or more runs than the other team (win by domination, or "mercy" rule). Players can play either exhibition, regular season, all-star, or playoff games. The game also features authentic Major League Baseball rosters for the 1991 season. Gameplay commonly features double and triple plays, and only the fastest runners in the game are capable of stealing bases. It was one of the first video games to feature individual hitting abilities for each pitcher.
Classic match-ups include Texas' Nolan Ryan versus Oakland's lineup with such all-stars as Jose Canseco, Rickey Henderson, Dave Henderson, and Mark McGwire.
Sports Talk Baseball featured Sega's sports talk speech synthesis for running commentary of each in-game play. It was their second game to feature this technology (Joe Montana II: Sports Talk Football being the first). In order to produce the running commentary, Sega contracted sports announcer Lon Simmons as well as the vocal reproduction company Electronic Speech Systems to record the unique phrases and play calls for the game. Being that several simple phrases had already been recorded in the previous game, much of Joe Montana II: Sports Talk Football's running commentary was reused for Sports Talk Baseball.
Instead of a running commentary, Super League '91 used a constant soundtrack of Japanese drums during the game and a remix of the umpire voices to a techno tune at the main menu. There is no way to see any advanced statistics other than at the end of the game in the Japanese version (i.e., errors and hits). All the players are show using hiragana with English letters being used only to show field position and the status of the player.
When you play as the batter, if you hit the ball hard enough, you can see a black-and-white picture of Sonic the Hedgehog on a billboard with the name "Sonic" under it.