Multi-Sports Unlicensed-Straviganza, part 2: I'm talkin' Baseball!

Now, on with our continuing ~~wasting of time~~ analysis of Quattro Sports unlicensed multi-cart! Last time we looked at the cover art, but now we'll return to our normal bread-and-butter: goofy screen-captures! We'll start with the menu:

Well, I'd rank that a few steps above Game Genie, but below most other mini-games.

That being said, let's take a look at the first game in the line-up:

Baseball Pro's

We get to choose a team and engage in some pretty acceptable baseball

Nothing earth-shattering, but fine -- especially for an unlicensed game.

So, after poking at the gameplay for a few seconds, it appears that this cartridge contains at least one complete sports game. That already increases its depth of play way beyond, say, Track and Field or World Games -- they're just 5 different ways to pretend hammering the "A" and "B" buttons constitutes a minigame!

But wait, there's more!

When you pick a team, you see this unusual map:

You may notice that only about half of the dots are in the good ol' baseball-lovin' U.S. of A! Codemasters has decided to have representative ~~pro baseball~~ Baseball Pros Teams show up from around the world!

And in what is truly an obscure game treasure trove of goofiness, each city, country (or in some cases, continent) gets a team based on something its famous for! At least, according to Camerica and/or Codemasters Software Co. Ltd.

(replace "Brilliant" with "hysterical")

So, let's get to team-reviewin', starting with...

Northern/Easternly North America!

We'll start with the New York Knockouts, tough guy. They're so tough, their logo is a skyline and smog!

The Boston Graduates are such a highly educated team, their logo is etched on 5-lined paper.

The Toronto...Maples. Toronto's team is named after the piece of foliage from the Canadian flag! Uh, they sort of weren't trying with this one...

South-Westernly North America, plus South America!

The Los Angeles Limelights...because that's where Hollywood is! And the limelight is ~~a song by Rush~~ a theatre term! Also their logo has little "film sprocket" gradations! (Um, and the font/background color is totally washed out).

The Houston Rockets. HOUSTON, WE HAVE A TEAM NAME!

The Mexico City Sombreros. And their logo has a little sombrero! Yes, that's not insulting to anyone.

The Hawaiian Volcanoes. Because their island was built from volcanic activity! Hopefully this naming trend will continue during league expansion, and next year they'll face, oh I don't know...the "Doverian Chalks" or something.

Western Europe

...though the Doverian Chalks are going to have to beat out the London Royals, if they want to be the U.K.'s representative Baseball Pros. And I for one don't fancy Dover's chances: the Royals are represented by the most regal emblem since R.C. Cola!

So, I'm guessing the Paris Concordes are named after that super-sonic plane, because its French and/or Paris's greatest contribution to world culture. Then again, I guess it's nice that CodeMasters is (are?) thinking outside of the box: after seeing the lack of effort with Toronto, I guess we could be looking at a team named "The Paris Eiffel Towers."

The Roman Centaurs. Ok, look at the logo; this time I think they just didn't know how to spell "Centurions."

The Berlin Brewers...cuz Germany! And beer!

Eastern Europe / Asia

The Great Red Scare, lead by the Moscow Bears! It's so scary even their letter is cowering before their mascot!

The Peking Dragons; a surprisingly apt Chinese baseball mascot. The only confusing thing is how the 8th-batting-order fellow appears to ALSO be named "Dragon."

The Tokyo Bullets...? But if you look closely at the logo, you can tell it's meant to named after "bullet TRAINS", and we're just left with another confusing transportation-named team, like Paris.

Australia

The Sydney Boomerangs; here another whole continent gets only one team to represent it...but at least they picked an obvious icon. However, -10 points for not having anyone in the batting order named "Bruce."

Africa

And, after they spent all their best ideas, we're left with the African Allstars...and not only does one team represent a whole continent, but they didn't even bother to pick a city or even a COUNTRY to name the team after. Yup, this team hails from the continent.

THAT'S more like the no-effort I've come to expect from unlicensed games!

I'd like to cover more now, but I'm afraid our time has...