Baseball

Baseball is one of Nintendo's launch-line NES games and one of the original Black Box titles, and it is a complete, playable baseball game in a cartridge that looks like it should not be. Two teams of six, one stadium, a full nine-inning match.

Its controls are the foundation every later baseball game built on: select your pitch, aim it, then switch to the batter and time the swing, all with one controller and no menu screens. The simplification - six fielders, no player names, no season - is what makes it work, because a first-time player can be competitive within a couple of innings. The Japanese Famicom release predates the NES version by nearly two years, and it was one of the games that established the baseball genre on home hardware.

• ▸Full nine-inning match with two six-player teams
• ▸Single-controller pitch aim then batting, with no menus
• ▸Deliberately simplified field - the game a newcomer can play immediately
• ▸Two-player head-to-head with separate batting and fielding turns