Baseball Stars on NES was way ahead of its time—you could actually build your own team from scratch, name all your players, and even run a full season where stats carried over. That was mind-blowing back then. The coolest part? Winning games earned you cash based on how popular your players were, and you could spend it to upgrade their skills or buy new ones. Rookies were cheap but weak, while All-Stars cost a fortune but crushed it on the field.

Oh, and there was this sneaky little secret: if you scrolled way down the player list, you could hire female players, which was unheard of in sports games back then. My first team was a mess—I blew all my early money on one overpowered slugger and had to grind with a bunch of scrubs to afford decent pitchers. Still one of the deepest baseball games on the NES.