R.I.P. Jaleco

There was a time before EA, when great sports games didn't require official licenses or sports icons on the box cover. A time before memory cards, when progress was recorded by ancient means of hieroglyphics to scrap paper. When a player named Paste smacked mammoth homeruns without taking the smack. When, free from the restrictions of a licensing agreement, developers had the liberty to include novel features such as charging the mound. Yes, those were in some respects the best of times - a time when a company called Japan Leisure Corporation dominated the likes of R.B.I. Baseball and Nintendo's own Baseball. Jaleco (not to be confused with the Connecticut Leather Company or Coleco) was once synonymous with 8-bit baseball.

Rendered largely irrelevant in the modern era of gaming, however, (yes, it has been a very long time since Jaleco released a good game) Jaleco was recently sold. All that history, the associated gamer nostalgia, has a price - a price that most could afford by scavenging their couch cracks or by vigilantly scouring a city sidewalk. And who says you can't buy anything for a penny these days.