Rusty’s Real Deal Baseball

I got this when it first came out a couple of months ago, but just realized I never ended up mentioning it here. It’s an interesting little game for the 3DS – it’s a free download, and you buy baseball-themed mini-games inside, 10 in all. The really interesting part is that when it comes to buying those in-app games, you can negotiate with “Rusty Slugger” to bring the price down – so although the asking price is always $4, you can bring all of them down to about $1.50-1.80. And don’t worry, a character pops up to tell you when you’ve gone as low as you can go, so you won’t feel like maybe you’re overpaying for one of them. Negotiating is done by chatting with Rusty, and giving items and discount tickets that you receive from playing the mini-games. I’ve bought 6 of the games, and do plan on getting the remaining 4. I’ve had a lot of fun with the mini-games, and this is from someone who doesn’t even like baseball. They’re all score based, and it’s just plain fun to pick up your 3DS and go through a bunch of them, to not only better your score (and there are challenge modes), but also to unlock items and tickets to be able to get discounts on the other mini-games. And hey, Rusty is a pretty fun character, and I like that there’s a bit of a narrative going on as you go about buying more of the mini-games. I hope they turn this into a franchise and start adding more sports – would love a hockey one!