Bain: Retro computer baseball game review: Avalon Hill Pro Manager
From SABR member Derek Bain at Tuatara Software on October 18, 2019:
This is the fourth entry in a series focusing on computer baseball simulations to supplement the chapter “Play Retro Baseball Video Games In Your Browser” from my Hardball Retroactive book along with the corresponding post at Baseball Analytics. The series focuses on baseball simulations – games in which the primary emphasis is on managerial strategy and the ability to replay entire seasons with a degree of realism. Baseball video games that are strictly arcade representations of baseball (based solely on reflex and hand-eye coordination) are excluded.
Avalon Hill Pro Manager is a bares-bones text-based hardball simulation released solely for the IBM PC in 1984. I stumbled across this title while searching for baseball articles in the Computer Gaming World Museum archive. I did not acquire a PC clone until 1992 so I totally missed the boat on this one as it was never ported to other systems. Major League Manager, a revised version of Pro Manager, was published by Spinnaker Software in 1986. The in-game options remain intact, fielder names are now displayed and the text descriptions acquire a bit more flavor.
Read the full article here: http://www.tuatarasoftware.com/baseballanalytics/2019/10/18/retro-computer-baseball-game-review-avalon-hill-pro-manager/
Originally published: October 22, 2019. Last Updated: October 22, 2019.