Mattel was a major manufacturer of both home video game systems like Intellivision as well as handheld games also for home use beginning in the mid 1970s at a time when the video game industry was in its relative infancy. The first handheld games were cheap and very limited with their graphics and abilities. They tended to utilize small dots, blips and dashes to represent people on the screen.
Mattel Electronics Baseball was released in 1978 and offers very basic baseball game play. As in real baseball, you can swing and miss, strikeout, pop out, hit fly balls and fouls and even hit home runs. No base stealing is allowed. You follow game play by paying attention to beeps that the game makes to alert you when you get a hit.
Instructions
Gameplay
I find gameplay to be difficult and a bit frustrating. The screen size is obviously very small and when the pitch comes in, you only have a split second to react and swing. In fact, before you swing you have to press the pitch button to activate the game and then quickly revert back to batter mode and attempt to swing at the pitch. There is a slight delay after you attempt to hit the ball in terms of the game’s reaction where it lets you know you either made contact with the ball or didn’t. It seems quite random at times as to whether you get a hit or not.
Once you’ve made contact with the ball, you press the Run button repeatedly to move your player around the bases.