As everyone knows, baseball is the king of sports, and the National Pastime was very well represented during the early years of home gaming. Back in the early 80's, if baseball fans wanted to recreate the thrilling 1982 World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and Milwaukee Brewers, there was a large choice of games with which to do it.

Every major console had their own baseball titles. The Atari VCS and Intellivision games were the focus of a nasty ad war between Atari and Mattel with Major League manager Billy Martin backing the VCS and Intellivision spokesman and evil genius George Plimpton backing Mattel. The ColecoVision and Odyssey2 also had their own baseball titles, but no celebrity spokesmen.

Life was good for baseball fans/classic console owners, but one system did not get to share in the baseball love. The Vectrex was not graced with a baseball game of its very own. Vectrex owners could only watch as their friends got to enjoy the greatest sport on earth from the comfort of their own home. If a Vectrex owner wanted to emulate their favorite stars like Pete Rose, Nolan Ryan or Rupert Jones, they would actually have to leave their house and play real baseball outside.

After all these years of shame and envy, Vectrex owners no longer have to suffer the indignity of being without a baseball game of their very own. At this years Classic Gaming Expo, Pitcher's Duel, a game that had been completed but had never been released finally got to see the light of day.

Pitcher's Duel began its life way back in 1983. The person hired to create the game knew absolutely nothing about the game of baseball. He was ordered to watch games on TV until he knew enough to make a basic baseball video game. Luckily for him, video game technology was not advanced enough to need much more than a basic baseball game. Pitcher's Duel was nearly complete when the project was shelved. The impending crash of the video game market would destroy any chance that the game would ever be released.

Nearly 25 years later, a small supply of the original games were acquired and made available at CGE. The first 100 copies were complete with box and instructions and the game carts themselves were put in a special clear green shell. There were also loose, black carts available without any extras.

The game itself isn't as exciting as the story of it's creation. Gameplay is completely centered around the pitcher/batter match-up (hence the name "Pitcher's Duel"). The game's graphics were ahead of it's time, with a TV style view facing the batter. Pitching consisted of choosing from a variety of pitches and then guiding it to the plate with the joystick. Batting is much more difficult since the camera never changes position and it's hard to judge when the ball is close to the plate.

The computer "handles" the fielding and base running on it's own without any help from the player. This is where the programmer's lack of knowledge about the rules of baseball comes to light. The action outside of the batters box looks more like something from a beer-league softball game than anything resembling real baseball. Fielders don't seem to be too interested in getting the ball or throwing to the correct base. Baserunners are called out when they shouldn't be (and that's if they choose to run to the right base in the first place).

Pitcher's Duel might not be the most impressive game out there but it's certainly one of the most collectible. With only 100 copies in existence, the green boxed version is easily one of the rarest games out there. Copies were going on Ebay for well over $100 and should only go up in value. What makes this game special is the fact that it was actually made back in the 80's and not a recently created homebrew. There are only a handful of games like this out there and it would make a great addition to any pre-8bit collection.