#13 - Baseball StarsReleased 1989 for NES
I was a huge baseball fan, and loved playing all types of video baseball games. This one had no real teams or players, but what it did have was the opportunity to make your own team, create players, sign them to contracts, increase stats, etc. It was the first sports game on the NES I can remember that had this type of built-in career/General Manager mode. There was also a quasi-role playing aspect in that each player had a prestige rating and the cumulative prestige of the two teams playing that game determined how much money the winning and losing teams earned. That money could then be distributed among the players to enhance their skills up to that particular player's max skill points. Or you could save up the money to acquire pricey free-agent star players.
It was one of the only NES games, and the first baseball game, to have a battery backup so you could keep your created teams, configured leagues & seasons, and cumulative statistics (batting average, HRs, ERA, etc) stored in the game's memory chip.
Gameplay is very simple. Although the fielding aspect was quite advanced for the time. Players could actually dive and jump for balls in play. You could even jump at the outfield fence to rob players of homeruns. Although the game did not have any real players, you could create real players on your user created team. There was also a CPU team built into the game called the American Dreams that consisted of players with names and stats reminiscent of Pete Rose, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Sandy Koufax, etc.