Intellivision World Series Baseball
Intellivision World Series Baseball
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Intellivision World Series Baseball

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Intellivision World Series Baseball

Intellivision World Series Major League Baseball is a baseball video game (1983) designed by Don Daglow and Eddie Dombrower, and published by Mattel for the Intellivision Entertainment Computer System. IWSB was one of the first sports video games to use multiple camera angles and present a three-dimensional (as opposed to two-dimensional) perspective. It was also the first statistics-based baseball simulation game on a video game console; all prior console baseball games were arcade-style recreations of the sport.

The game's full formal title (due to licensing requirements) was Intellivision World Series Major League Baseball. It was typically shortened to World Series Baseball in use to differentiate it from the prior Mattel baseball game.

Intellivision World Series Baseball displayed the batter and pitcher from a "center field camera" view. One player chose the pitch type, while the player batting chose when to swing when to take a pitch, and whether or not to bunt.

Once the ball was hit, the game switched to a "press box camera" view, where the defensive player could control the fielders and the batting player controlled the baserunners.

When runners were on base an inset window displayed them, and the batting player could lengthen or shorten their lead and attempt to steal.

The game was originally written with a simplified version of Daglow's 1971 mainframe baseball statistical simulation program, so that the MLBPA license could be acquired by Mattel and the game would accurately simulate the play of real Major League Baseball players. For economic reasons in mid-1983, Mattel withdrew from this plan at the last minute, and the designers were forced to replace actual players with the names of the Blue Sky Rangers Intellivision game design team.

Intellivision World Series Baseball is also notable for the following innovations:[citation needed]

In the early 1980s, video games were based on models established either by coin-op games' scrolling playfields, or board games' static background images. The screen was either a stable field on which characters moved or a top-down (sometimes angled) display that scrolled horizontally, vertically or both ways across a larger virtual image. These restrictions were created by the limited memory size of early video game consoles, where a single screen would use up much of the RAM storage space available in a machine, and small video game cartridges that held only 4K (later 8K or 16K) of ROM memory.

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