Ryne Sandberg Plays Bases Loaded 3

Developer: Tose
Year: 1991

So, Ryne Sandberg. By this point in time, he'd probably locked up his Hall of Fame credentials, but it's worth nothing that 1992, the year after the release of RSPBL3, was his best year ever, with a WARP3 of 13.0, one of the 30 best ever for a second baseman. Something to think about is all I'm saying.

This game plays like BL2, with a couple of really shitty improvements:

• The entire game is now from behind the batter, including fielding and baserunning. This is the opposite of every other baseball game ever made.
• The season mode has been replaced with a 'perfect game' mode where what you're trying to do is play a game that hits 100 points on some ridiculously complicated scale that includes runs and hits, but also things like spectacular catches. Lame.
• Ryne Sandberg's name is on the cart, but he's not actually in the game. Really.

There's not a lot to recommend this over BL2, then. Gameplay is almost identical, except when it's upside-down, and though it's easier to catch a pop fly, it's almost too easy when the ball is hit back at the pitcher -- pretty much an automatic out, and this happened about a half-dozen times in Laura's and my game.

Now, if there's a saving grace, it's that on the L team, which laura played with, your closer is a guy with a 1.04 era named coseti and he's a fucking submariner. We were both pretty sick of BL3, but then laura puts this guy in and it's like, Holy Shit! Submariner! I won't take the time here to digress re: my love for the submariner, but let's just say it was a really nice surprise.

In the end, though, I lost, which sucks, because laura decided to start throwing wack submarine curveballs and i couldn't put a bat on them. And BL3 lost because it's backwards and otherwise not a lot better than BL2.

Rating: 6/10 Not the best, not the worst, and has nothing to do with Ryne Sandberg. Presence of Submariner: 10/10
Trivia: Ryne Sandberg was named for Ryne Duren, a reliever from the 20s who was also not in Ryne Sandberg Plays Bases Loaded 3.
Advice: If you stand on your head after you hit the ball, it's sort of almost as good as every other baseball game ever made.
Best Moment: Submariner. Obviously.