Earl Weaver Baseball was the sequel to the incredibly realistic Earl Weaver Baseball 1.0 and 1.5. Unlike the previous iterations, EWB2 had full season mode (including the ability to simulate games or a whole season), a player draft (with salaries), and the ability to easily create your own league. Like the previous releases, you could design your own ballpark (a feature that took 15 years for other baseball sims to recreate).
The managerial aspect of play was as good as the original, with an excellent "drag and drop" lineup interface.
The gameplay, however, seemed to suffer a bit. The new version used bethesda's very blocky "3-D" graphics engine which appeared very low resolution and had weird camera angles. Like Earl himself, the game was also bit home run happy--it was never hard to get that late three run homer that Weaver always played for.
Like the previous version, the ball was easy to hit, which made it very playable, despite the poor graphics. Although it was a significantly better game than its competitors, EWB2 was overshadowed by the superior graphics of Hardball III and never sold very well. Current fans of Earl Weaver Baseball most often play the 1.x versions and tend to ignore this later release.
Although using a 3-D graphics engine was groundbreaking at the
time of release, EWB fans see it as mostly a disappointment due to its really yucky graphics rendering. I, personally, like playing this version... but I do admit that it was hard to get over the very unrealistic graphics. I had hoped for an EWB version 3 to fix the problem, but that was never to be. EWB2's failure in the marketplace killed the franchise.
TRIVIA:
If you bought the boxed version at the store, you were treated to a complimentary copy of Earl Weaver's book, Strategy.
EWB2 was the first interracial computer baseball game. Player skin colors matched their race in real life. Although you were able to edit or alter any of the other 60 player attributes, you could not change the skin color.
EWB2 now allowed you to play inside a domed stadium. This version of the game also increased the number of parameters you could modify when designing a ballpark. Creating you own league with your own custom ballparks was the best part of the Earl Weaver Baseball series.
Although EWB2 accounted for such detailed game variables such as wind speed and direction, there was no option to play night games. All games were played during the day under bright, sunny skies (except in a domed stadium)
