R.B.I. Baseball was released by Tengen in the USA for Nintendo in 1988.  
It was originally called Pro Baseball: Family Stadium in Japan for the Famicom system.   
R.B.I. Baseball quickly became one of the most popular sport video game series of its era.    

R.B.I. Baseball features 10 teams.  8 of those were the division winners from the 1986 & 1987 seasons.  R.B.I. Baseball also included All-Star teams for the National & American league during that era.  

Each team is distinguished by their unique player personnel.  The players all possess different abilities which give their team its own distinct set of strengths and weaknesses when batting or pitching.  Each RBI baseball team features 4 pitchers. Two are starting pitchers with a high stamina ratings allowing them to pitch deep into the game. The other 2 are relievers only able to pitch effectively for a few innings.

The teams have a 4 bench players, which all have varying batter abilities, and can be substituted in at anytime. An interesting aspect from a programming standpoint is that a pinch hitter in his first at bat gets a substantial power bonus.   

R.B.I. has it all with late game heroics from big bats & towering home runs, to dominating pitching performances in the deciding game of a series, & crucial managerial decisions you can make.  R.B.I. Baseball ultimately shine in the highly competative 2-player setting.

To view the individual player ratings & assessment for pitching staffs & batters,
click the images to the right.  

Pitcher ratings

Batter ratings

R.B.I. Baseball has two attributes that make it quite similar to Tecmo Bowl.  R.B.I. is best experienced in the highly competitive 2-player mode.  Just like Tecmo Bowl, the pioneering aspect of R.B.I. being granted licencing rights by the major league baseball players association (MLBPA) put real players into the game for the 1st time.  Nolan Ryan's blazing fastball, the powerful bat of Mark McGwire, & a host of stars made the experience of playing R.B.I. much more significant than other baseball games of that era.         

The greatest feature found in RBI is a myriad of varying player abilities.  This establishes an immeasurable role in how the games are decided.  The managerial aspect of R.B.I. is paramount.  The key with R.B.I. is being able to maximize the potential that each team’s batting line-up possesses.  The bench additions go a long ways to injecting a lot of power into your line-up.  Each team has a powerful bat or two sitting on the bench.  Properly utilizing the pitching staff is important as well.   All the player ratings can be found on the batting & pitching pages. 

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