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Subject: Digital Games Review Digest, #41
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                        Digital Games Review, Number 41
 
                            Tuesday, March 17th 1992
 
This issue we look at:
 
Genesis: Warsong versus Master of Monsters
         Saint Sword
         El Viento
Amiga:   Castles
PC:      Earl Weaver Baseball II

[Welcome to all our new subscribers, and a special welcome to 
 our new overseas subscribers from as far away as Hong Kong,
 Norway and even the Ukraine!  Look for more reviews of titles
 from far overseas (hint hint) and don't forget that we can 
 only include reviews if YOU write 'em!       -- Dave Taylor]

----------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Date:    Fri, 13 Mar 92 23:02 EST
From: <JPE1@PSUVM.PSU.EDU>
Subject: Genesis: Warsong versus Master of Monsters

     Recently, two games have been released which aim at the Genesis
strategy gamer from a fantasy point of view.  Each has its strengths and
weaknesses, although one clearly has more of the latter than the other.
Both games provide the standard strategy elements of differing units with
varying attacks, defenses and modifications for terrain types etc.  I will
assume familiarity with the general features of strategy gaming, and
focus on the distincitve characteristics of each of these titles.  Warsong
is a beautiful game with slick production all the way through.  MoM offers
some features not found in Warsong, but siffers from an inexcusably bad
manual and a much more highly flawed execuation.

     In Warsong, the player takes on the persona of Garett, a prince who
must battle many foes to protect his kingdom and ultimately, of course,
the fate of his whole world.  The storyline is actually quite well
developed, and each of the game's _twenty_ scenarios starts, ends, and
is sometimes interrupted by dialogue between the player's characters and
their on-screen enemies.  The handling of this aspect of the game lends
adventure game atmosphere to the experience (e.g. there are magic items
that enhance your commanders' powers), but this is no adventure
game - there is no exploration to be done here, just all-out strategy
wargaming.

     The gameplay itself is a delight.  The interface is intuitive and
never obstructive.  Both games present the danger of losing the chance
to attack at the end of a move by hitting the wrong button too many time
but I found myself doing this much less with this game than MoM.  The
player controls from one to eight commanders, sometimes having computer
controlled allies, and each commander leads up to eight units of troops
selected from a few types of soldier.  Commanders have a range of
influnce or power within which their troops gain attack and defense
bonuses, and gain experience when they or their troops destroy an
enemy unit or leader (although destroying a leader removes all of the
troops that were under its command _without_ giving any experience for
them - so kill the units first!)  Every ten levels of advancement, the
commander changes class type to one selected by the player from a few
choices based on the commander's previous class.  In this manner, the
player may elect to focus character development on magical or combat
abilities, although I found it most advantageous to make only the
obviously magically inclined characters (e.g. Cleric and Warlock)
develop their magical abilities while the other characters concentrated
on fighting abilities.

     The graphics in this game are outstanding, and the sounds more than
adequate.  There is some flicker in battle sequences where enemies
explode, but it does not affect gameplay since battle sequences are
computer controlled anyway.  It has been noted that the numbers showing
the strength of units may be hard to read on some TV's, but I play on an
RGB monitor, so I can't judge this.  The manual has some bad English
(why can't they just hire some American to read these things before
release?) and has some organizational features that this reviewer
couldn't understand, but at least after reading it I knew what to expect
and how to play the game, which is not true of the manual for the
next game that we'll look at.

     Master of Monsters is a difficult game to review properly.  I like
it now, but initially I hated it.  As hinted above, the manual is
practically useless.  Its charts are wrong, it uses different names for
the monsters and masters than the actual game does, and its instructions
and descriptions are often unintelligible or just plain wrong.  The game
also has an annoying tendency to declare the "Game Over" before the
player is ready to give up.  In fact, when I first got this game, I was
ready to take it back until I was persuaded to play it just a few more
times.  Well, once I figured out on my own what was going on and how to
play, the game got much better, and I found I could finish a scenario
before the the set number of turns was used up and the game automaticall
declared over.  However, anyone purchasing this game should look forward
to a steep learning curve and lots of frustration, and only eventually
to some hard earned enjoyment.  One netter said it took him _two weeks_
to like this game - not something that can be determined over a quick
rental.

     The graphics also leave much to be desired.  While it has been said
that the main strategy map's graphics are adequate to the task of
representing the various units and terrain types, for $65 one should
get more than simply adequate.  The combat screen looks better, but its
fonts still suffer from a terminal case of the jaggies.  The gameplay is
not as smooth as Warsong, though perhaps slightly more involved.  In this
game, up to four players (with the computer filling out the number if
there are fewer than four humans around) each control a 'master' who
summons monsters to send out and destroy the others.  There is a wide
variety of monsters to be summoned, and which monsters are available
for summoning depends on which kind of master one has elected to be.
Monsters can go up levels with experience, but in this aspect the game
is not as detailed as Warsong.  Masters can also cast spells and summon
elementals, and they gain a set number of magic points at the end of
each round to spend on these activities.  There is also a campaign mode
where one player can take on an increasingly powerful series of computer
controlled masters, and in this mode you can bring back monsters from the
previous scenarios, thus allowing for greater monster level advancement.

     The advantages of this game over Warsong are its multi-player
capabilities and greater ease of scenario selection.  In MoM one can 
select from any of the available scenarios at any time, whereas in Warsong 
one must follow a set linear progression through the scenarios.  However,
this allows Warsong develop the storyline which MoM lacks, and which (at
least for me) leads to a greater identification with one's characters.
MoM, however, only has _one_ battery-backed save, which limits the
number of campaign or scenario possibilities that one could explore at
the same time, whereas Warsong allows one to save up to five positions.
Warsong allows you to turn its BGM off, and whereas MoM allows you to
select which BGM plays for each master, I have found no way to turn it
off.  MoM does use hexes though, whereas for some strange reason,
Warsong has squares.

     Overall, I find Warsong to be a much more satisfying game, and
unless you need the multi-player capabilities, if you're only going to
get one strategy game, it's the one I would recommend.  Both titles are
an improvement over the only other strategy game I've played for the
Genesis, Warrior of Rome.  In both of these titles, the most mystifying
aspect of that earlier title, namely that the graphic representations
of the battle carried almost no useful information, has been rectified.
Here the battle scenes are not only informative, but in both titles they
are well animated and fun to watch.  Both games will remain on my shelf
of keepers, but again I must warn that MoM had a hard time getting there
Warsong, on the other hand, is a delight from the very first moment, and
is now one of my all-time favorite titles.

                              Warsong         MoM
                  Graphics       9             6
                  Sound          8             7
                  Gameplay       9             7
                  Manual         6             3
                  Challenge      7             8

                  Overall        9             7

Warsong, from TRECO/NCS, and Master of Monsters, from Renovation, both
    for the Sega Genesis, $55 and $65, respectively.

------------------------------
 
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 92 11:26:48 -0500
From: jjs11@po.CWRU.Edu (Joseph J. Shen)
Subject: Genesis: Saint Sword

Saint Sword is another in the genre of slash 'em, kill-the-boss games
set in a fantasy world.  I forgot the exact premise and background
behind the whole game but basically you control the hero as he makes his
way across different scenes until he reaches the big, bad creature at
the end who is terrorizing the planet with its evil.  Upon killing it,
the land is free again and everybody is happy.

You are a warrior who, as he gains more experience in any particular
scene, can mutate(?)  into an even more powerful warrior spontaneously.
(For the longest time, I had no idea what was going on; my character
just flashed and I kept on thinking that I had died or got poisoned or
something.  I should have read the documentation first).  Each of these
upgrades is distinguished by a different armor color (skin, yellow, and
green) and you hit with more force as you advance.  Every time you die,
you start over.  Also, you have two special techniques available to you.
When monsters die, some drop magic balls (which increases your magic
points, more later) and some drop transformation icons.  With these, you
can change into either a centaur (more fighting ability), a bird (can
fly), or a fish (can swim).  As you finish chapters ( I think that is
what they are called) you gain the ability to use more and more magic
spells.  I forgot some of them already but there's one that shoots out
fireballs, one that gives you hit points back, one that gives you
transformation icons, and, the really useful one:  one that shields you
from all hits (even works against the bosses so it's great!).  If I
remember right, there are six chapters, two of which have two scenes
each and the other four have one scene.  You keep on killing monsters
until one of them vomits out a key.  You then follow a pointing arrow
which leads to the exit and on to the next scene or into the boss' den,
whichever the case may be.  Kill the boss to get to the next chapter.
Pretty simple stuff.

I initially thought the transformation concept was neat but actually,
the different animal forms were useless and the only time you HAD to
transform was to squeeze through one tight underwater space as a fish.
The centaur was damn clumsy so I never used it.  The bird was pretty
good for decimating the flying monsters although the poor things didn't
really impede your path and all it served was to satiate my desire to
kill everything in sight.  You can sort of paddle your feet in the water
to stay afloat but the fish gave you more underwater mobility.

The controls really sucked and the movements of my character were kind
of jerky so sometimes I fell down holes when I didn't want to.  The
music was OK but plain.  At the end of chapter six and after you killed
the BIG boss, the game made some loser excuse and you got sent back to
chapter one to go through the whole game again, but at a harder level
(the monsters hit harder and there was no arrow to guide you to the
exit; the color was different, too, just to be complete).  The game
finally ends after you kill the big boss the second time around (really
no big deal since, as I said before, you can just activate the magic
shield and then freely whack away).

Concept: 6 	 [I guess it was OK for an action game although I would 
		  like to have seen more done with the different 
	   	  transformation modes]

Game Play: 3  	 [Like I said, the controls sucked]

Music: 7

Documentation: 4 [Not really needed for such a simple game]

Difficulty: 3 	 [I finished it in a day and I wasn't even trying that 
	          hard.  There is a password save function so you really 
		  have to do everything only once]

Overall: 4 	 [I'm being generous.  I thought it was a RPG which is 
		  why I rented it.  The $3 gone into renting the game 
		  was a waste in my book]

------------------------------
 
Date: Sun, 16 Feb 92 16:32:44 PST
From: milton@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu  (Milton Kuo)
Subject:  Genesis: El Viento

     Taking place in 1920's America, El Viento ("The Wind") features a
female, Annette, as its main character who is trying to stop a cult from
summoning Hastur, an evil force of some sort.  Similar in many ways to
the Valis series, El Viento sounds like it could be a really fun game
but because of poor game design, it becomes nothing more than another
game in a market with disturbingly few original and fun concepts.
Everything about El Viento seems flawed in some way and makes it very
difficult to like and enjoy.

     One of the most obvious reasons for disliking El Viento is its
poorly rendered graphics.  Wolf Team's Mega Drive games have never had
great graphics but then again, they have never been as bad as those seen
in El Viento.  While flashy graphics certainly do not a good game make,
El Viento's graphics are bad enough at times to be an outright
eyesore.  What makes the graphics so unimpressive in El Viento?  Well,
for starters, the use of color on the backgrounds is just terrible.  It
appears that some of the backgrounds are rendered in only two colors --
brown and black.

     Foreground graphics fare better when it comes to choice of color
but that does not make them any less ugly.  For some reason, the
graphics in El Viento look like they were rendered in a very low
resolution.  Objects that are not rectangular have a "blocky" look to
them and the "jaggies" are painfully apparent throughout the game.  Part
of the problem with the "jaggies" is probably due to an injudicious use
of colors to provide anti aliasing.  All in all, it is difficult to
visually distinguish El Viento from a standard 8-bit NES game.

     Oddly enough, the intermissions between levels feature graphics
that are bright and very well illustrated in sharp contrast to the
graphics in actual game play.  If the graphics within the game were as
good as those used in the intermissions, El Viento would be a true
standout in terms of graphically excellent games.  However, as nice as
the intermissions are, it was disappointing to see that they were not
animated in any way.  The intermissions are nothing but "stills" with
some accompanying text.

    One other point of note about El Viento's graphics is that during
the game, objects move more fluidly and realistically than most other
video games through the use of more frames for the animation.  Instead
of shuffling her feet to move, Annette (the main character) really
does appear to be running.  In fact, by watching closely, it is possible
to see Annette pivot when she does an about face, perform a pirouette
when changing direction in mid-air, et cetera.  Just about every move
Annette can make is fully animated giving a very lifelike appearance to
the movement.

     Poor graphics is only scratching the surface in explaining why this
game is not fun.  The area that really hurts El Viento is its uninspired
play mechanics.  El Viento is the typical "run left and get to the end
of the level to fight the big boss" with only two very minor exceptions.
El Viento allows the player to run left or right -- it is possible to
get to the very end of the level and instead of exiting, one can run
back to the beginning of the level (for whatever purpose it is worth).
Finally, once enemy creatures have been killed, they stay dead -- there
are no annoying invisible monster "generators" in this game except on
the final level.

     Play mechanics in El Viento are nothing that have not already been
seen in other video games.  One button is used for throwing boomerangs,
another is used for jumping, and the final is used for the magic attack.
Depending upon how long the magic attack button is held down, a
different "spell" is cast.  The direction pad move the character and
pressing down will cause the character to crouch.  The only feature
which seems new is that pressing the jump button while crouching will
cause Annette to crawl quickly.  El Viento controls well and the game
responds well to the control pad.  However, because of sloppy
programming, scrolling is choppy at times and the game suffers from slow
down on some of the boss scenes.

     It is interesting to note the fact that the final level does indeed
boast an infinite supply of monsters.  It is on this level that I tired
of this game and decided to cheat to get to the boss and finish the
game.  The final level is littered with these bat-like creatures who
move with alarming speed and are very difficult to shoot down.  Each
touch from one of these creatures does not do very much damage but given
the speed at which they attack and their tendency to attack in swarms,
it is not very hard to get killed on the final level in less than thirty
seconds.  Given that the final level is VERY long, it takes quite a
while to memorize exactly what to do in order to finish this level.
What was meant to be a challenging level becomes nothing more than a
long, pain-in-the-butt tedious level that really makes this game not
worth playing.

     This in fact appears to be the fatal flaw in El Viento -- the
difficulty balance is just too erratic.  The first two levels are
perhaps too challenging and the levels after that are ridiculously easy.
Then comes the final level which is just hard beyond belief.  The
saddest thing is, the difficulty is not so much a test of skill as it is
a test of memorizing the levels.  For a game that is not that fun and
innovative to begin with, it is unreasonable to believe that someone
will actually play this game long enough to actually become an "expert"
at it.

     To continue beating a dead horse, sound effects and background
music in El Viento are not very good, either.  The sounds of explosions
are fair but the BGM just reeks.  The music is boring, it is almost
entirely in mono, and for some reason it just does not sound crystal
clear.  This seems to be a problem with all of Wolf Team's ROM-based
games -- sounds are muffled and by not using stereo, this muffling
effect seems even worse.  Fortunately, the music and sound effects,
while not exciting, are not grating to the ears -- they are unobstrusive
enough that it is not a difficult task to just ignore them.

     Contrary to what some of the video game magazines say, I did not
enjoy El Viento at all.  Poor graphics, boring sound, boring game
play, and an unimaginative theme make this one of the least enjoyable
games I have ever played (and it is not even a port).  Given that this
game is selling at a list price of nearly $70, I definitely do not
recommend buying this game.  When it comes down to the nitty-gritty, El
Viento is just plain stupid and not fun.

     Graphics    : 5.0                      (blocky, monotonous graphics)
     Sound       : 5.5   (explosions are interesting but music is boring)
     Gameplay    : 6.0                   (slow down and choppy scrolling)
     "Funness"   : 4.0  (not too fun to begin with, final level kills it)
     Originality : 3.5  (nearly everything has been seen and done before)
     Longevity   : 4.5      (final level takes a long time to figure out)
     Difficulty  : 4/5                   (3/5 if not for the final level)
     Overall     : 4.5                           (perhaps worth a rental)

El Viento, from Wolf Team, for the Sega Genesis.  8 Mbit (1MB) title, 
    I've seen it for about $40 or so too.

------------------------------
 
Subject: Amiga: Castles
Date: Fri, 13 Mar 92 10:26:09 -0600
From: jmellby@iluvatar.dseg.ti.com

I bought Castles for my Amiga 1000 the day after it came out.  (Actually
I bought 2 for friends in addition.)  A capsule summary would be that it is
an entrancing game -- we have spent numerous after-midnight sessions on
this game.  The "diplomatic" part of the game is lacking, and on the
slower Amigas the user interface is close to horrible.  Castles is
available for Amigas and PC's.  (On PC's a follow-on campaign is also
available).

I am interested in the middle ages, and we have been enjoying the
constructive/campaign class of games (Populous, Sim*, Railroad Tycoon)
so we have been looking forward to Castles (on the Amiga) for a long
time.  I have to recommend this game, although with reservations on
the slower Amigas.

The object is to build Castles - you design a castle and allocate
laborers to each section.  As it goes up you watch the walls rise.
Workers put up scaffolding, sawhorses, etc.  Periodically you are
interrupted by messages requiring you to interact on the diplomatic
side of the world.  You are also attacked by various enemies.
Most of the play is hiring and allocating the right mix of workers,
and hiring and training troops to fight off the enemy.  Different
mixes of workers are rated satisfactory, good, excellent.  There is no
information about what this rating means, although it seems that
better mixes build quicker.

The graphics are very nice.  Good detail (for Amiga resolution) on the
castle and people.  Unfortunately you have only 3 views - overhead,
oblique front, and oblique rear.  When castle walls get built it
becomes hard to control actions inside the castle except the overhead
view.  It would have been trivial to make oblique side views, or to
reverse the oblique angle, which would have made the graphics easier.
I sometimes thought the authors took the easiest possible graphic
approach.  

The music contributed to the mood, but was nothing marvelous.
The game will install on a hard disk, and uses manual/questions style
of copy protection.  It include a manual, and separate Amiga
instructions in multiple languages, as well as a page summarizing the
copy-protection questions (apparently the PC version had a different
pagination in the manuals).

Battles are fairly simple.  You place troops (up the archers on
completed walls to protect them if possible) and the enemy runs up
and dukes it out.  The enemy tries to cross your moat and tear down
your castle.  You typically get a couple of attacks a year.  More if
you do something stupid in the diplomatic phase.  There is also a mass
attack at the end of the castle completion.

You can choose either a single castle or an 8-castle campaign.  I
am only started with my first campaign so I can't speak to that
scenario.  You can choose the speed, and "real world" or "Fantasy".
So far in the fantasy I have heard diplomatic mention of ogres but
have yet to see any actual fantasy opponents.  (Very annoying!)

The diplomatic phase is someone posing you a problem or question for
you to answer.  This ranges from "what name do I give the baby?" to
"The picts are invading - shall we send $ or a new commander to fight
them?"  The results to this are all behind the scenes.  This is one of
the more annoying aspects because there is the appearance that you
could answer these questions randomly, and have only minor ill
effects.  Occasionally, if you answer especially stupidly, you might
get an extra large attack from the Picts or (I would guess) the church
might turn against you.

The user interface is also VERY annoying.  Whoever did the user
interface should be shot, stabbed, burned, blown up, and then given a
very stern talking to!  The user interface layout is at best very
clumsy, and on top of that, it doesn't respond!  Much of the response
is because you really need a faster computer, but the interface is
still poorly laid out, and the manual doesn't help much.  To be fair,
people running this on faster Amigas report no problem or disagreement
with the UI.

Buttons all respond slowly.  Frequently the buttons may miss your
click entirely.  If you click several times it may buffer up 5 seconds
worth of click and execute them all at once (to your surprise!)

Example: scrolling - since you cannot shrink the display you have to
scroll around, either to build or fight.  To do this you click on the border
in the direction you want to go.  Frequently it will respond up to 1-2
seconds after you click.  Frequently it doesn't respond at all.  So in
a critical time, like in a battle, you click lots of times, only to find
out several seconds later that it accepted all of the clicks, and scrolls
you 4-6 spaces further than you want to go.

Example: to put people to work on a tower you bring up that display
and change the number of workers with up and down arrows (small and
adjacent).  You click on up and it increases by one.  If you hold
the button down, it starts increasing by 2 or maybe 3 or 5.  To get
up the the maximum (90 - wasn't it obvious?  It wasn't to me!)
you hold the button down for while.  Of course, if you want to go to,
say 50, you hold the button down.  When you let it it keeps going for
several seconds and add anything from 5 to 25 people.

Suggestions:  Build a moat!  That nicely delays the enemy.  Recruit
troops and train them every month to have the highest quality.  Buy
food to last the winter and through sieges.  By the end of the castle,
try to have maximum troops trained to "elite" status.
When building, assign close to maximum workers (90) to each section
rather than putting 1/2 the workers on two sections.

Finally, despite a bad user interface, an amusing but marginal manual,
and the "behind the curtain" nature of the diplomatic options, we are
playing this game a lot.  If you have a faster Amiga and like the
construction class of games, you will enjoy this.

	Graphics: 	8
	Music:		6
	User Interface: 3
	Overall:	7.5

------------------------------
 
Date: Mon, 17 Feb 92 09:40:45 -0700
From: masten@beta.lanl.gov (David A. Masten)
Subject: PC: Earl Weaver Baseball II

Earl Weaver Baseball II, actually the third version of this very popular
game, finally hit the shelves after the last out of the baseball season.
In the opinion of this long-time baseball fan and game owner, its an
also ran.

In fairness, I am more a fan of managerial games emphasizing statistical
realism.  What attracted me to EWBB2 was the computer manager and
ability to recreate a season in an evening, not the graphics or arcade
options.  I'll summarize the different modes of the game, and compare
its lineup to other games I've played.

First, I primarily played the game on a 386-33 with VGA and Sounblaster
support.  But I also took a few cuts with a 386DX-16 and 486-33.  I
bought both the basic game, the 1990 teams/managers disk, and the
Commissioners disk.  The basic game with eight all-time, all-star teams,
runs about $35.  The total package will set you back about $70.

You hve the choice of the arcade mode where you control the players'
pitching, hitting, baserunning and fielding (throwing only).  Or you can
opt to manage only.  Two player, one player vs computer, or computer vs
computer are supported.  In manage mode you can choose full, or single
pitch.  Two non-graphical modes are provided for faster computer-managed
play:  a "superfast" mode, and a "stats plus full physics" mode.  The
former is only marginally faster than the latter, so I see no use for
it.

Graphics

Ads hyped the games graphics, including multiple camera views and
instant replay.  I found the constantly switching "director" controlled
views of the individual players to be distracting and hard to follow.
When toggled off, you only get an overhead view of tiny players
consisting of a few pixels.  Not impressive, especially when compared to
the earlier Mac version.  The large, nicely done, pitcher and batter and
their motions are exceptions.  The fielders' movements are done fairly
well, far better than Microleague's The Manager's Challenge (TMC).  The
user controlled camera angles are confusing and buggy.  I gave up on
them after a few tries.

A reasonably fast machine is needed for smooth scrolling graphics.  I
found the 386-16 to be marginally adequate.  With all machines, setting
the speed for realistic pitch speed with minimal dead time results in a
too fast ball in play.  This leaves minimal time to make fielding and
baserunning decisions.  Text entry is buggy as a single keystroke
sometimes results in multiple entries.  It's much worse with the 486-33.

Text, often against a distracting stadium background, is poor with MCGA
graphics.  Radar gun readouts are often blocked by other info.  I have a
problem with a slight wraparound of the lineup box.

Sound

Sound support is poor.  Only the sound of the ball bouncing or hitting a
glove ("blurp") is through the Soundblaster.  Other sounds such as the
crack of the bat and umpire calls are handled by the PC speaker.  The
theme music is extremely annoying, I disabled it after about a minute.
But if you disable the equally annoying organ music, you lose the pc
speaker sounds.

Play (arcade) mode

This really isn't my interest, but I did try it out.  The results are
supposed to be dependent on both your ability and the players' stats.
But I found them to be unrealistic.  For instance, I hit a few homers
with pitchers.  Plus there is the problem in choosing the right game
speed.  The computer is a very tough opponent, having Ted William's eye
for the strike zone and is not affected by pitch speed.  Kids may find
this mode fun, but a full game would take a couple of hours.  I don't
have the patience.

Manage mode

I bought the game because of the computer manager which allows fast
replays of seasons.  But even single pitch, full graphics games take 30+
minutes on the 386/33.  Managing is a hassle as you must think quickly
or hit pause.  The options menus are pretty comprehensive, but unwieldy.
I would also prefer to control baserunners like a running coach, not
with a before the pitch choice of aggresive/normal running.

Normally I choose the "stats and physics" (computer managed, no
graphics) mode.  The screen consists of a line score, lineups and box
listing current hitter, pitcher, and bases occupied.  Games take
approximately 30 seconds at the fastest speed setting, so it is
virtually impossible to follow the game.  Still there is some drama as
it lists baserunners getting on, pitchers changing, and hits and runs
tallied on the linescore.  You can pause at any point and choose other
manage/play options, a nice addition.

The computer managers (each team is different) are marginally
brain-dead, but nowhere near as bad as in TMC.  More on this later.

The basic package allows only single games or a 162 game format with a
single team vs the rest of the teams on the disk.  A nice inclusion is
automatically saveable box scores and stat accumulation.  But stat
presentation is weak with the basic game, and team stat compilation is
virtually non-existent.  So if you want to play a season, the
commissioners disk is a must.

The commissioners disk allows automatic scheduling of any length season
with any number of teams.  It would be nice if it also allowed a user-
input schedule.  It has edit/create/copy/draft features for leagues,
teams, players, ballparks and managers.  It gives excellent stats
presentation for teams or individuals, which can be sent to screen,
disk, or printer.  League leader (or worst) stats can be shown for
dozens of categories, with selectable AB or innings as qualifiers.  This
is a great feature!  Most stats except pitcher appearances, complete
games, and shutouts, are there.  This disk also allows team rosters with
ratings and/or stats (real or accumulated) to be saved, so you can have
a handy reference when playing.  This disk is by far the best thing
about EWBB.  If after reading this you still want EWBB, get this disk.

The commissioner disk lays bare the faults of the computer manager(s).
This disk allows you to configure any team's manager based on 19
categories, consisting of a few questions each.  Most menu options are
covered including when to platoon, steal, hit and run, guard the lines,
pinch-hit, relieve, etc.  I wont elaborate, but as often as not the
decisions are dependent on what I consider unrelated variables.  And
even if the variables are correct, often the default values are the
reverse of what they should be (ex:  lower minimum bunt rating required
for a decision to sacrifice with a better hitter than with a weak
hitter).  Oh well, at least you can change them.

Back to stat realism.  Among some smaller replays, I played a
commissioner disk computer controlled 162 game 1990 AL schedule.  This
took about 14 hours to run on the 386/33 in "stat plus physics" mode.
Toronto won the East instead of Boston with 90 wins (86 real), Oakland
won the West with 104 (103).  Most other teams' won/loss records were
good matches.  Canseco led with 46 homers, Rickey with 56 steals,
Eckersley with 32 saves, Ryan with 225 K's, Welch and Ryan with 20 wins.
All believable results.  Most team stats were low, especially doubles
and steals.  Team batting averages were about 15 points down, ERA's
about 0.80 low.  Contrary to my settings, injuries were ignored so
non-platoon hitters had 600-750 ABs.  Pitchers innings came out very
well, unlike the awful job done by TMC.  Infrequently the program
miscredited saves and also wins to starters who pitched less than the
minimum.

I played an NL schedule where for the first half-season, I set the
lineups for each game, then let the computer play.  This let some drama
build as records accumulated, teams moved up and down in the standings,
and players vied for league leaderships.  EWBB does well enough in this
mode.  But run scoring in the commissioner disk controlled second half
was near non-existent.  Almost as if it was trying to correct for
somewhat high first half stats.

Some other whiffs:  Game credits run at odd intervals during the game.
Maybe they were trying to emulate commercials.  They succeeded in that
it was about as annoying.  I dislike the laborious wheel copy protection
in which you have to choose between 24 teams and 24 years.  Ballpark
dimensions are often wrong, but they can be edited with the
commissioners disk.

All in all, I've bitched about the game, but I found the replays semi-
entertaining, and infinitely better than TMC.  It has a quick play mode,
without which I can't imagine playing a long schedule.

As to other games, Pursue the Pennant (PtP) offers much greater stat
realism, is far more user friendly, and easier to manage a single game.
I prefer PtP's text based radio paly-by-play format.  To a lesser
extent, the same holds for APBA, which has a superior text play-by-play.

APBA now offers an optional computer manager disk and the next version
of PtP promises one as well (scheduled for this spring).  Although PtP
seems more expensive, it is all inclusive.  Strat-o-matic, a long time
boardgame maker, also offers a text based game with computer manager at
a reasonable price.  The complete EWBB discount price tag is about $70,
which is the same as PtP.  APBA and Tony Larussa's also have low entry
prices but quickly add up to the same or higher.  Judging from reviews
of TLUB, I doubt if it is any better than EWBB.

  Graphics:  	 4 
  Sound:  	 3 
  Manual:  	 4 	(skimpy)
  Playability:   4
  Fun:           4
  Overall:       4   	(one of my most regretted purchases)

  So in  final, I'd  recommend PtP,  APBA, or  SOM.   Get EWBB2 only if you
  simply must have a play option.

Earl Weaver Baseball II, from Electronic Arts, for the IBM, EGA minimum.

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