A couple of weeks ago, I pointed out the Mattel Classic Football 2 game as a really inexpensive, fun gift for Generation Xers this holiday season. Another game that Mattel has reissued is the Classic Handheld Baseball Game. Back in the late 70s and early 80s, this game was not as widely played as the Mattel football game, but, it was still a lot of fun to play.
The game has most of the features of a typical baseball game including, balls and strikes, hits, and running the bases. What it lacks is base stealing, double and triple plays, and bunting. But, these features were also lacking in the original incarnation of this game. Also, each game is only five innings long, which is odd considering that the length of a Little League game is six innings, and games at other levels are normally 7 or 9 innings.
One of the features that definitely improves Classic Handheld Baseball over its predecessor is a sound on/off button. When the football and baseball games were originally released, there was no way to disable the sound. This made it difficult to play the original game late at night.
The big issue with turning off the sound on the baseball game, however, is that the sound effects that are played when a hit occurs imply how many bases the runner may successfully take. (In other words, a potential single gets one beep, a double gets two, etc.). So, playing this game without the sound makes it more difficult.
You have to look at this game from a low cost, high fun potential standpoint. For $12.99, this is a great stocking stuffer. I’m planning to buy a few of these for friends of mine. It’s good to see that this electronic game is not sold out at this point in the shopping season.