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First post, by lazygamereviews

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Around 1993, I got this game called "Batter-Up!" from a shareware vendor. It was a baseball game of some kind with Chik-Fil-A ads on the stadium walls, that's all I recall.

I found the backup disk I made in 1998 for it recently, but unfortunately the files are corrupted. And upon looking around online, I can't seem to find any record of this game existing! Not even sure who developed/published it.

These are the files on the backup disk:

17HKj.png

If anyone has any information, please let me know! Maybe we can find this and put it up for download so it's not lost to time. Thanks!

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Reply 2 of 30, by lazygamereviews

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No, definitely not, it was just called "Batter-Up!". Had nothing to do with cats, and it wasn't a Windows game either. This is an early-90's DOS baseball game, with humans at-bat. May have had a small educational aspect to it, but I don't remember what it was.

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Reply 3 of 30, by ripsaw8080

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Any identifying text strings in the .BAS, .EXE, or .HLP files regarding developer, publisher, or copyright date?

Are there unreadable areas on the disk, or some other kind of corruption?

Reply 4 of 30, by lazygamereviews

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ripsaw8080 wrote:

Any identifying text strings in the .BAS, .EXE, or .HLP files regarding developer, publisher, or copyright date?

Are there unreadable areas on the disk, or some other kind of corruption?

Opened the files that seemed like they might have this info, but no luck. Most don't even open or copy from the disk and those that do haven't shown any info. The *.HLP file opened, but it still doesn't say who made it. It just starts off with this line:

"The first screen of the program welcomes you to the
game BATTER UP. The object of the game is to score
hits and runs by answering math fact problems as
accurately and quickly as possible."

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Reply 5 of 30, by leileilol

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It is pretty obscure. All I can find is a unrelated statistics program. I WILL keep an eye out for it

The problem with games like these is that the internet only takes you for granted, and just search the limited range of games on shady sites that only care about the commercial games. It's like there's a strong sense of amnesia of anything shareware or even freeware between 1996 and 2000. There's a couple of shareware games I used to play that Google fails for as well, and no one so far has helped me locate them. I imagine, if I ask on a big certain "reloaded" site, the young, alleged "DOS software experts" would most likely have no clue and think i'm bluffing about, since the game apparently doesn't exist.

Makes me wish I could turn back time with a ton of dollars for broadband, warp to 1997 with a huge drive to suck the entire internet onto, beating Alexa at their own game.

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long live PCem

Reply 6 of 30, by MaxWar

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Sometimes i had success reading " Corrupted" disks by trying several other floppy drives. If your drive has somewhat misaligned head, or the drive that wrote the disk had, or any combination of the two it can result in read errors. Just an idea here.

FM sound card comparison on a Grand Scale!!
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Reply 7 of 30, by ripsaw8080

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If the game is shareware, can you make an image of the disk and upload it somwhere? Might have to skip sectors that won't read. It appears that the directory entries are intact, and some of the files might be recoverable depending on what areas of the disk are damaged (e.g. primary FAT table trashed but secondary still good).

Reply 8 of 30, by MaxWar

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Apparently there is a baseball game with this name on the Game gear, by Namco, any related? Theres also the Super batter up version on the Snes.

FM sound card comparison on a Grand Scale!!
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Reply 9 of 30, by lazygamereviews

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MaxWar wrote:

Apparently there is a baseball game with this name on the Game gear, by Namco, any related? Theres also the Super batter up version on the Snes.

Nope, not related at all. This is a math-based arcade game apparently, not like those console games.

And I've tried it on three different floppy drives, with no luck. It can get a bunch of the files from the disk, but not all of them.

EDIT: Here is an image of the shareware disk I made with WinImage. Used another drive, this time an external USB one I forgot I had. Didn't have to skip as much of the data as I thought it might. Doesn't work in DOSBox though.

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Reply 10 of 30, by ripsaw8080

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I get no errors from WinImage when copying the files out of the image. The executables seem to be intact, which is good, and the game runs in DOSBox. There may be some support files that are damaged, will have to see which ones.

I'm attaching a shot of the title screen. Some identifying info is drawn with graphics, so couldn't see it in the executable file.

Attachments

  • batup_000.png
    Filename
    batup_000.png
    File size
    7.5 KiB
    Views
    3902 views
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

Reply 11 of 30, by lazygamereviews

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ripsaw8080 wrote:

I get no errors from WinImage when copying the files out of the image. The executables seem to be intact, which is good, and the game runs in DOSBox. There may be some support files that are damaged, will have to see which ones.

I'm attaching a shot of the title screen. Some identifying info is drawn with graphics, so couldn't see it in the executable file.

Well that's awesome. Are you doing anything special to get it to run in DOSBox? It won't open for me at all on v0.74, only gives an error about not being able to read the BATUP.RPT file.

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Reply 12 of 30, by ripsaw8080

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Default settings in DOSBox 0.74, but the game does seem particular about being in a subdirectory named BAT like it is on the floppy. Not sure if the game should be started with BATUP.EXE or BATTERUP.EXE, but both seem to work.

Reply 13 of 30, by lazygamereviews

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ripsaw8080 wrote:

Default settings in DOSBox 0.74, but the game does seem particular about being in a subdirectory named BAT like it is on the floppy. Not sure if the game should be started with BATUP.EXE or BATTERUP.EXE, but both seem to work.

Nice, it had to be in the "BAT" folder! Working mostly, though I'm getting some pretty serious graphical corruption here and there. Attached screenie.

Now that we know it's from 1992 and made by VETA / S.D. Vaillancourt, maybe there's more hope of finding a non-corrupted version.

Attachments

  • batup_002.png
    Filename
    batup_002.png
    File size
    18.46 KiB
    Views
    3891 views
    File license
    Fair use/fair dealing exception

https://www.youtube.com/lazygamereviews

Reply 14 of 30, by ripsaw8080

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Yep, no surprise that some of the files are damaged if parts of the disk were unreadable. At least you have more info from the title and nag screen for tracking down a complete copy.

Reply 15 of 30, by lazygamereviews

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ripsaw8080 wrote:

Yep, no surprise that some of the files are damaged if parts of the disk were unreadable. At least you have more info from the title and nag screen for tracking down a complete copy.

Definitely looking up compared to earlier today. Thanks for the help! Hopefully with at least a few more people aware of its existence, someone will come across it. I know I'll be digging.

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Reply 16 of 30, by MaxWar

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Yep, the author might be David Vaillancourt. You could try to contact him if all else fails. He might even be pleased to find someone caring for his old software.

FM sound card comparison on a Grand Scale!!
The Grand OPL3 Comparison Run.

Reply 17 of 30, by lazygamereviews

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MaxWar wrote:

Yep, the author might be David Vaillancourt. You could try to contact him if all else fails. He might even be pleased to find someone caring for his old software.

Indeed, seems like it could be this guy. Another site references him being involved with both the Nat'l Math Bee and making educational software, so hopefully I can find a way to get in touch.

In fact, here is a story on the math bee and Batter Up! Appears the game is used to judge the speed and accuracy of doing math.

Found this covering the history of the game and its usage in the National Math Bee. It states that "a few dozen copies were sold during the 1990s", and apparently I was one of those few dozen since I clearly remember the original disk. Pretty freaking awesome to stumble across all this just by finding an old floppy!

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Reply 19 of 30, by lazygamereviews

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senrew wrote:

Damn Clint, that's some nice research in a short amount of time.

And this is how LGR episodes get made 😀

On further inspection of the corruption of the disk, the only file that I can't seem to access correctly at all is BASE.IMG... rrrgh, so close!

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