Friday Starter – Unexpected Street Fighter Baseball Lore

 June 30, 2023  Posted in Friday Starter 251 Views

Highlights from the Esports Olympic Games

WBSC eBaseball Power Pros finally had its spotlight in the Olympic Esports Week in Singapore. The $1 Konami baseball game was one of the Olympic events, with Japanese player Shora taking home the victory. The relevant part of the wrap-up video above starts at 1:20, showcasing the commentary talents of dishnet34.

This video from NBC Sports shows a highlight or two for most of the matches, if you’re interested in small bites. If you want to watch the whole thing, you can chow down here (this official stream got 1.4 million views, not bad at all).

Street Fighter adds some baseball lore

A screenshot from the World Tour mode of Street Fighter VI. Dhalsim from Street Fighter is playing baseball, using his body-stretching ability to touch first base while the rest of his body is still standing at home plate.

The new Street Fighter VI has a single-player story mode called World Tour that’s full of zany lore, and I had to include this one. If you asked me to rank all Street Fighter characters by which was most likely to have been a baseball player, Dhalsim would not be high on that list, but… Sadly, Dhalsim is soon banned from the league for using his Mr. Fantastic powers to make a mockery of the game.

This gives me a reason to show off this file I’ve had saved on my computer for a while now, the cover of the June 1993 issue of Electronic Games:

The cover of Electronic Games magazine from June 1993. Ken, E. Honda, Blanka, and Chun Li are playing baseball to promote a large feature on different baseball video games.

Go on then, Capcom. Make Marvel vs. Capcom 4 but this time it’s a baseball game. You’ve already done the fighting game thing, so it’s time to branch out.

An indie Japanese baseball card game

Thanks to the latest Indie Tsushin, a zine about Japanese independent game developers, I’m pleased to introduce Batting Cardgame AKA Saigo no Ikkyu AKA Last Pitch Card Game. This is a simple two-player card game, either playable in-browser or with physical cards (physical version is $7 but only ships within Japan I’m afraid).

It’s a head-to-head game of predicting your opponent’s moves and using your resources smartly. Each player starts with an identical hand of six cards. Each card has two sides to it: A batting side and a pitching side. The batting options: two take pitch cards, three swing cards, and an all-out swing card (worth two points instead of one on a successful hit). On the pitching side: two ball cards, three strike cards, and a fireball card (a guaranteed strike).

A screenshot of Batting Cardgame. With a pixel art aesthetic, you can see your own player's six cards and their abilities. A pixel art man wearing glasses and a bunny costume swings a bat on the cards.

Players alternate batting and pitching each turn. Each turn consists of laying down one card, then both are revealed simultaneously. If the pitcher played a strike and the batter played swing, then the batter gets a hit (worth one point). If the pitcher played a strike and the batter took the pitch, then no points are scored. You lose the card you played, which also means you’re losing the pitcher ability that was on that card.

Since you both have the same cards, and there are only six, you can anticipate what your opponent hasn’t played yet and use that information to guess their next move. Would your opponent really use his last ball this pitching round, letting you know that he’s forced to throw strikes now? You know he has the fireball/all-out swing card left, but when is he going to feel confident enough what you’ll do to use it?

The first player to score four points wins. If you run out of cards before that, both players simply go back to the full hands they started with and play continues.

So give it a try in-browser against the CPU or a friend. The game is in Japanese, but it’s not too complicated. If you know katakana you have everything you need. If you can’t read anything, there are images on the cards, and it should all make sense after playing a round or two.

YouTube Viewing Guide

Slugfest week is over, and here are its fruits:

I came away from the week with a real appreciation for the vibe of this series, and I thought the humor-first commentary worked shockingly well (though I wonder how it would hold up after you’ve heard the same goofy anecdote even a second time). The gameplay is snappy and easy to pick up.

If I have one complaint: It does the same extreme rubber banding thing that NBA Jam and NFL Blitz also both did. If you have a lead, get ready to give up two homers in the next inning. If you’re down ten runs in the ninth, you’re basically guaranteed to score at least seven to make it close late. Back in the day it used to feel like I always lost Blitz and Jam games on the final play, and while I’ve won plenty in Slugfest, I can feel that same push and pull that seems to have nothing to do with how well I’m playing the game. That stuff might make sense for a quarter-munching arcade game, but no reason to do that on a home console.