The classic Bases Loaded games are back just for me, whether anyone else wants them or not
Back in the Eighties we used to pick up Bases Loaded from our local rental store every Summer, as it was one of the few “real” baseball games available. We loved our arcade style sports for when we wanted to rush through a quick, explosive game, but didn’t really know what sim sports experiences were. So whenever we played Jaleco’s game it made us feel like heady managers vying for not only wins but GOOD wins. Even back on the NES it was a surprising little game that had a lot of depth in pitching, batting and managerial moves, something that we wouldn’t really see again for nearly half a decade. There were direct sequels, but they mostly just iterated and adjusted some aspects of that first game.
When Super Bases Loaded arrived as one of the first SNES games, we were equally excited to include it into our rotation. It had nice “graphics” and audio and mechanics, and looked like a true next gen experience. We’d get more of the same gameplay too, we hoped. But, well, we didn’t really love it. It’s not that Super was a bad game, but it was a very different game to that original, asking us to not just win a matchup but to play a very specific way. It also didn’t have a full season, something that would keep us going the entire Summer with the NES game when we’d rent it every other day for two weeks straight to get through. With Super we had to manually keep track of wins and losses with our friends, which delegated the game to a “nice, one time rental” that we never really got back to. It also had sequels, but because we didn’t connect with that original we had already moved on.
The Jaleco Sports Bases Loaded collection packages both of these games alongside some neat touches like options for CRT scan lines, leaderboards and scans of the original instruction booklets, folded and torn edges and all, that often yell at us (not joking, they’re almost hilariously and purposefully “Nineties LOUD”). The team at Rock It have done an admirable job porting these over — I’ve been playing the code on both the Switch and the Switch 2 — and I feel that the presentation in general is as a complete throwback to that bygone era as possible. This isn’t a full collection per se, since it doesn’t include the sequels and spin-offs, but the purpose isn’t to give us that full plate but rather the two most important games in the series, divisive for my little brother and I as they were.
And perhaps that’s who this collection is for: Midwestern Eighties kids like my brother and I and our group of baseball card obsessed friends who played backyard stickball and Contra and watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles religiously. Given it’s the holiday season and we’re having my brother and nephews over for dinners and movies, I reckon this may just come out for a rematch or two, just for us.
This review is based on a Switch code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher. This video originally appeared in The SideQuest LIVE for December 02, 2025.
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