Considered by some as one of the most innovative baseball video games of all time, many of the features in
Earl Weaver Baseball seem commonplace in today's games - as so many of the innovations have been adopted by subsequent developers. But at the time, what EWB brought to gamers was nothing short of revolutionary.
While the graphics aren't necessarily extraordinary, the sound (especially on the Amiga) and the overall depth of the game that fits on a single 880KB disk is astonishing.
Some
innovation highlights include:
- The first time players were offered the option of either playing in arcade mode (using eye–hand coordination as well as managerial strategy) or manager mode (where users managed their teams but did not physically control the players).
- The Amiga version featured voice synthesis, a first in a sports computer game. Players were announced at each plate appearance or substitution. The DOS version had some voice synthesis as well, but less than the Amiga and of lower quality.
- The first time different stadiums were shown graphically on the screen, with game play adjusted for their actual dimensions. Defunct or demolished stadiums were included, such as the Polo Grounds (New York), Griffith Stadium (Washington, D.C.), Ebbets Field (Brooklyn, New York), and Sportsman's Park (St. Louis). This also marked the debut of the Green Monster of Fenway Park in any computer game.
- EA issued annual baseball statistics disks to update the rosters and stats of the major league players until 1991.
- Players featured what Dombrower called "artificial ego". Players would realistically occasionally make errors in judgment, such as trying to take an extra base or attempt to catch an uncatchable ball.[1]
In 1996,
Computer Gaming World named
Earl Weaver Baseball one of the 25 Best Games of All Time on the PC.