Super Nintendo
Released in 1991 by Sony Imagesoft
Grade: C+
This cute, unlicensed game screams “Japanese!” and it’s surprisingly good in some respects, but has a couple unforgivable flaws.
Where it falls in the series
I think this is all on its own, at least in North America. In case you’re wondering, yes, it’s called “Hakunetsu Pro Yakyuu Ganba League” in Japan 🙂
Praises and gripes
Any 16-bit baseball game that does not use the typical old-school pitching system will catch my eye. I’m talking about the classic method of steering the ball mid-flight and defying physics in ways that would make hitters have nightmares.
Luckily, this game doesn’t do that. Each pitcher has a fast pitch and slow pitch assigned to different buttons. The game does allow you to steer the ball, but with a very limited range. You can throw something like a slider by pushing the D-pad in the direction of the pitcher’s glove side. You can also move side-to-side on the rubber. The ball comes in pretty fast and it looks clear from the high viewpoint. Pitchers have varying strengths. One guy threw his fastball at 76 mph, and the next at 90 mph, which was a very noticeable difference.
All in all, it’s a good pitching system, which is more than you can say for almost any old baseball game. Hitting is typical, just one button, and you move around the batter’s box and try to time the swing.
In the field, things unravel somewhat. The AI does you no favors tracking down batted balls. Players seem slow as molasses, and it’s undoubtedly frustrating when your catcher simply decides not to go after a routine pop up. Baserunning can also be an exercise in disappointment, with no AI assistance to help you avoid basic mistakes.
That said, there’s surprising realism with the outcome of most plays. If you rip a liner to third base, you’ll likely get thrown out by a hair. But if you ground one in the gap that the shortstop barely can reach, you’ll probably beat the throw. Final scores can be pretty low, and nine innings go by briskly. (That’s my other “old-school baseball pet peeve,” that games take too long.)
The game has low-res anime characters on fake teams like the Rains, Winds, Bees and Motors ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. The characters are pretty cute, I must say, especially in the batting view where you can get a nice look at those big rounded helmets. When the ball is in the field, the game is very zoomed out and simplified.
As much as I like the pitcher-batter duels, these old baseball games can only be so fun for so long, and if I invested any time trying to win games, my controller wouldn’t survive my explosions of anger when the game’s bad AI betrays me.