HardBall! + HardBall II Reviews

I saw there is a manual for Hardball but I could not find one for Hardball 2. Still wish you can play with a Joystick or gamepad. I remember hardball for the Commodore 64. Loved it, and always wondered if there was something like a team construction disk like in 4th and inches. found out that Hardball 2 has a team editor which is very interesting.

First of all: I LOVE that Atari is bringing back these old MS-DOS era games. $10 USD for both Hardball! 1 and 2 seems reasonable, but after purchasing and downloading here are my concerns: 1) The combo installation takes 203 MB on your hard drive, and includes DOS-BOX. This installation should be several MB tops, NOT over 200! That would have filled an entire 1990 PC hard drive back in the day! Checking the STEAM installation file folders, HARDBALL! uses less than 300k, and HARDBALL! 2 is 900k. DOS-BOX adds 33 MB. And then, Atari includes 105 MB of Windows Runtime Installers, which you probably don't even need. And the scanned PDF instruction booklet is ANOTHER 37 MB. 2) The included MANUAL/INSTRUCTIONS button takes you to a scanned PDF of the ATARI XE system cartridge game for HARDBALL! (Hardball 2 instructions are NOT included), which uses a joystick. IT'S THE WRONG SYSTEM INSTRUCTIONS!! NOT even the MS-DOS instructions?! MS-DOS never used the joystick for HARDBALL!, so good look figuring out the key combinations to even start playing under MS-DOS emulation. Major quality control goof-up here. 3) HARDBALL! only has the 4 color CGA or Monochrome graphics modes, with PC speaker sound only; no sound card support. BUT... it sounds and looks just like I remember, in all its mid 1980s glory. 4) HARDBALL! 2 has 16 color EGA support and Ad-lib sound, so there's that. All-in-all, a MARGINAL thumbs down for me but could be EASILY fixed by Atari. Lower the price a little, include the MS-DOS instruction manuals for BOTH games, trim the ridiculous installation file size, and you've got a retro-winner.