With five new additions to Nintendo Switch Online's catalogue of NES and SNES games arriving today, we decided to review these new/old releases to help you decide which to play first. Enjoy!

With a name like Super Baseball Simulator 1.000, you might expect a hardcore sports game. But nope! It's a product by Culture Brain, a company known for offbeat games like Super Ninja Boy and The Magic of Scheherazade, and that unconventional spirit shines through here, too. In Japan, the game is titled Super Ultra Baseball, giving a somewhat better idea of the kind of strangeness that lies within.

Things certainly seem normal when you first start. It's presented like many other baseball games of the 8/16-bit era, with a behind-the-batter viewpoint that switches to an overhead view whenever the ball is hit. There are three leagues, two of them with unlicensed teams from cities around the United States. However, there's a third Ultra league, where all of the players have super powers. For example, batters have swings that will turn the ball into a bomb, which will explode in the mitt of whoever attempts to catch it. You can give it the power to orbit outfielders, allowing the batter extra time to hit the bases, or remove shadows to make it more difficult to catch. As a pitcher, you can turn yourself invisible or create shadow duplicates, change the speed of the ball by lighting it on fire or turn it into iron, or even cause it to warp around. Outfielders can even use powers like a rocket jump.

The usage of these skills is dictated by a shared pool of Ultra Points, which are allocated at the beginning of each game and can't be replenished, so you can't use them carelessly unless you set them to unlimited. Each skill is relegated to a specific player, so you can't choose which to use either. But it is incredibly silly to select a team with magical powers like the Heroes and match them up with some sad chumps from Boston, then watch them use their super powers to mess around with them.

Super Baseball Simulator 1.000 sits in a position where it's weird but not quite weird enough. Compared to Konami's robotic Base Wars or SNK's similarly futuristic 2020 Super Baseball, it's not quite as over-the-top, because outwardly it looks and feels like any other early 16-bit sports game. The visuals and sound are strictly average, especially compared to games that came later in the generation. And it's certainly not a patch on other major league 16-bit baseball games like Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball or World Series Baseball. Still, its weirdness gives it an identity that makes it stand out among other more technically accomplished games.