[3] This allowed players to create a team, configure baseball league & play a season, and the game's memory chip stored cumulative statistics.

The fielding, at the time, was a revolution in arcade baseball; it achieved a level of realism unseen prior to its release.

These ease-of-fielding features are characterized by examples such as off-screen fielders automatically drifting towards fly balls, fielders catching balls anywhere near them, the ability to jump and dive, infielders shifting to prevent extra base hits down the line when men are on base, etc.

However, despite the high sound, sometimes these pitches failed to drop and in fact crossed home plate for strikes.

Although the game does not use any real Major League Baseball teams, one of the default teams, the American Dreams, included players with names that are based on real (former) baseball players such as "Pete" (Pete Rose), "Hank" (Hank Aaron), "Babe" (Babe Ruth), "Sandie" (Sandy Koufax), "Cy" (Cy Young), "Denny" (Denny McLain), and "Willie" (Willie Mays).

The other default teams are the Ninja BlackSox,[5] Brave Warriors, Japan Robins, World Powers, Ghastly Monsters, Lovely Ladies (an all women's team), and SNK Crushers.

When creating a new team, one is given the option of choosing its main strength (for example defense, running, batting, balanced, etc.).

The option simply favors the chosen attribute when the computer randomly generates the players.

With the exception of a pitcher's ERA, stats are current when a player steps into the batter's box.

If at any point in the game one team attains a lead of 100 or more, play is immediately stopped and a winner is declared, even though the inning is not over.

Baseball Stars was a critical success, often referred to as the best baseball game on the NES platform, and as such, has become a franchise series for SNK, spawning five sequels, and its "create player" and "create team" functions have become standard features in sports games.

Citing the customizable teams and players, full season play, stat tracking, and sense of fun, they assessed it as "every bit as fun as it was eight years ago when it was the best baseball game the NES ever saw".

[13][7] It received a perfect 5-star rating in the book Ultimate Nintendo: Guide to the NES Library 1985–1995.

Two more sequels were made for SNK's console, the Neo-Geo: Two additional games were made with the Baseball Stars title for SNK's handheld systems, Neo Geo Pocket and Neo Geo Pocket Color: Baseball Stars and Baseball Stars Color.