Earl Weaver Baseball

Earl Weaver Baseball was a groundbreaking simulation style baseball game released for the Amiga, Apple II, and MS-DOS. Shortly after the original game's release, a "Commissioner's DIsk" addon was sold which greatly expanded the game's custom configuration options.

EWB was one of the first baseball games that allowed players the option of a "arcade" style experience as well as a full blown "manager" mode. Additionally, players could chose one or more teams and play every game for an entire season. Different stadiums were graphically different from each other and had different characteristics such as distance to fence, team logo placement, and coloration.

The game could also simulate innings, half innings, and entire games if the player chooses. Split screen two player mode was also available.

In addition, "player disks" were sold that contained entire rosters for various seasons which could be loaded into the game.

The team manager would come out and argue with the umpires during close plays, kicking dirt and making a scene.

Customization

There was also a robust character editor where the player could generate names, statistics, uniforms, and skin tones. It was also possible to create entirely new teams with a choice of preset logos and customized uniform and field colors. Players had a series of statistics which when edited, effected their in-game abilities.

It was possible to use the editor to boost these statistics to impossible levels, such as having a pitcher throw 107mph fastballs (which were un-hittable, because at that speed there were no frames of animation between pitch release and catch). Having the ability to create baseball "super men" actually forced the player to generate teams of realistic players, as injuries and trades could eventually pit these super men against the player.

Players could also create their own stadiums using a graphical interface. The stadium creator was powerful enough to create drastically skewed outfields (a 450' left wall and a 280' center wall, for instance) and allowed full customization of the grandstands, outfield seating, and style of the scoreboard. Several classic and demolished stadiums were included in the game, such as the Polo Grounds and Ebbets Field.

On the Amiga version of the game, voice synthesis would "speak" each player's name as they came up to bat or subbed in as a pitcher. In addition to providing the player's "real" spelling, it was also possible to separately edit the phonetic spelling of a player for purposes of the synthesized announcer.