HardBall 5

Timed Sega exclusive

Action-oriented baseball sim. Hardball 5 is mainly an update to Hardball 4, with the additions coming in the form of adjustable difficulty settings, sharper graphics, more comments by Al Michaels and improved league play which comes with a full set of 1994 major leaguers plus a bonus "legends" league. Includes multiplayer support for up to 2 players.

Released: 1995
Platforms: MS-DOS PlayStation Sega Genesis Windows
Genres: Simulation Sports
Developers: —
Publishers: —
Perspective: First person
Themes: Non-fiction
Country: United States
Age ratings: ESRB E

About

HardBall 5 is a sports video game developed by American studio MindSpan and published by Sport Accolade for MS-DOS, Genesis, and PlayStation. Al Michaels provides color commentary.

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

Gameplay

HardBall 5 is a baseball game with completely adjustable statistics. All MLB teams are featured, although the team logos are absent and replaced with fictional ones.

A special league featuring historic teams of the past is also available.

Reception

Next Generation reviewed the Genesis version of the game as HardBall '95, rating it two stars out of five, and stated that "Sim fanatics will love the stats, but the poor gameplay quickly removes any ideas of playing out a whole season."

Next Generation gave the MS-DOS version three stars out of five and stated that "The latest addition to the Hardball series is a good, solid one, but there's still a lot of room for improvement." The magazine gave the PlayStation conversion two stars out of five, and stated that "Hardball 5 is best viewed as a strict statistical simulation. Anyone who's looking for a playable baseball game should look elsewhere."