RP's Notesa: Here’s one I bet that you’ve never seen before. A ProtoPages.net EXCLUSIVE (isn't it time!?)! I got this review from a friend of a friend of a friend...I was never into the Vectrex that much (a bit before my time), but we all learn things, and I learn something new, today.

Pitcher’s Duel was seen in the Vectrex catalog back in the system’s heyday (1982-1984) but not a trace of it has been found until now. A contributor who wished to remain anonymous sent this game along for me to review. The game seems complete with just a few odd situations occurring during gameplay that may or may not have been on the plans to work out. With hours of testing, I was unable to get the thing to crash, lock up, or reset. Because of this, I would estimate that the game is 95% complete.

There is a funny story behind the development of the game. The programmer assigned to Pitcher’s Duel was not the sporting type, and didn’t have a clue about the rules of the game. He was told to observe some baseball on TV and pick up the rules and presentation in this way. That worked to some degree, but baseball IS a complicated game. When the first version of the game came in for testing, there were some problems. For example, a foul ball with two strikes resulted in a strikeout. The foul ball rule was explained and the game came back, this time, a foul ball was never counted as a strike! Eventually he got it right. Well, sort of. While playing the game, it’s not all that uncommon to see some unusual antics on the basepaths, like players getting “forced out” at a base when there was no one behind him, though you could imagine that he’s being “tagged out” and the ump is very quick to punch him out.

The graphics are truly remarkable. Before seeing them, I would have expected a Vectrex baseball game to look something like “Stick Figure Theater”, with simple lines and animations to allow speedy game play. Not so at all. Everything from the batter to the ball animation as it heads toward the plate and back from the batter is amazingly detailed and smooth for this system.

You can play from 1 to 9 innings, cleverly selectable via the “game” option when the game loads up. One or two players can play, and if you don’t pick up the controls, the computer will go into a self-playing “watch” mode.

There are basically two screens during gameplay. The main screen is the batter screen. Whether you are pitching or batting, you see the batter at the plate. Each batter is “introduced” with a little baseball card style graphic showing his position and batting average. Cool stuff. At the plate, the batter can maneuver left and right, or adjust his swing higher or lower. All of this is done with the amazingly responsive Vectrex control stick. The pitcher has a choice of fast ball, change up, or knuckleball (the split-finger wasn’t invented in 1983) and can control the direction of the pitch with the control stick.

The pitch/swing/hit animation is outstanding. You can see the rotation on the ball, which starts out rather large and scales away toward the batter. If the batter doesn’t swing at the pitch, an ESPN-style “strike zone” suddenly appears, freezing the ball as it crosses and leaving no question about whether the pitch was a ball or strike. If the batter swings and connects, the ball is rocketed back toward the screen. The first time I saw this, it made me say WHOA. That’s right. A Vectrex game made me say WHOA.

The other screen is non-interactive, as the batter, baserunners and defense run the play out. This is all from a blimp’s eye view, though you can clearly see all of the players, baserunners, and park details (pitcher’s mound, foul lines, and baseball). Again, this was much better detailed than I expected. You get “the call” in the upper right portion of the screen, which explains in simple text the result of that play (ie “Foul Ball”, “Out at first”, “Double”, etc.) and it is on this screen that some very strange things happen. Players forced out at bases with no one behind them, infield plays where the ball is thrown to second even though there isn’t a runner heading there, and baserunners overrunning bases and getting picked off. It’s really quite sophisticated and more than a little entertaining.

Hopefully the game will see the light of day and be released to Vectrex fans everywhere. It’s a fantastic addition to the system’s already impressive retro library.