Prospi got delayed, but thankfully something else just came out…
First, the bad news. Pro Yakyuu Spirits 2024-2025, Konami’s long-awaited return to realistic next-gen baseball action, has been delayed to October 17th.
So if you’re looking for a brand new, officially licensed NPB video game to import, there’s only one option: My9Swallows TOPSTARS LEAGUE.
I can’t say I was aware of this one pre-release, though certain other parts of the internet have known for a long time. This is an official Yakult Swallows-licensed otome game. Otome games are a type of visual novel in which you are a woman surrounded by boys. Generally, you’re choosing-your-own-adventure through a story, and picking which guy your character ends up with at the end.
What a title for a game like that.
This game is rated for ages twelve and up, and it’s out on Nintendo Switch only. So, safe to say it’s not as raunchy as the concept or the multiple double entendres in the title sound.
Baseball is oddly well-represented in the visual novel space. Doki Doki Pretty League is an older gender-swapped version of the above with something like 8 games in its series. Butterfly Soup 1 and 2 are well-respected English-language indie visual novels about Asian-American girls who play baseball. And Taisho Yakyuu Musume is a multimedia franchise (including a PSP game) about girls who ball in the Japanese equivalent of the Roaring Twenties.
New SABR review
I contributed again this week to the Society for American Baseball Research’s Gaming and Simulations site, with a review of Namachuukei 68. Namachuukei remains my favorite discovery while working on this site. It’s got beautiful art, great music, and a dang PCI in a game from 1991. So I had to talk about it for SABR.
MLB The Show 24 is on PlayStation Plus now
And hey, just a quick note here that this year’s The Show is free this month for the cheapest tier of PlayStation Plus, Sony’s online play subscription service. Far as I can remember or find by searching, this is the first The Show game to come to PlayStation’s subscription services. (Edit: Not true! Jdogg is correct, MLB The Show 19 also came to Plus). This has always been a little awkward, given that The Show has immediately released on Xbox Game Pass for a few years now.
I think the consensus has been this year’s game was a disappointment. The Negro League Storylines mode released unfinished (or possibly they held some content back for “live service game” reasons). And content in Diamond Dynasty was noticeably stingier this year, with more content locked behind pay-only packs and fewer opportunities to earn currency by playing.
The biggest new feature was adding playable female characters and a new expanded narrative to Road to the Show. I put a bunch of hours into this mode, as a female protagonist. And, man, someone needs to teach them what “narrative” means. Cutscenes where MLB Network personalities say how cool it is that your protagonist made it to the big leagues: that’s not narrative. Dialogue scenes where your protagonist’s friend is sad she isn’t in the bigs herself: that’s maybe 1% of a narrative. If anything ever happens, it must take dozens and dozens of hours to get to.
YouTube Viewing Guide
- Pro Yakyuu Spirits 6 (PS3) Gameplay – The older Konami games with World Baseball Classic modes are so nice. I’ve got Felix Hernandez and Chipper Jones facing off, and in an actual tournament mode with full teams (with some fictional players filling them out). Just nice.
- Tai VTuber Home Run Derby (Browser) Gameplay – This is a pretty mind-numbing callback to old Flash home run derby games, but with a bunch of VTubers I haven’t heard of. Cool for someone, I’m sure.
- Tony La Russa Baseball (Genesis) CPU vs. CPU Gameplay – I was not happy with how this looked and sounded on the MiSTer, so I recorded it with real hardware and a composite cable instead. Not sure that was the right call based on the sheer level of composite blur involved!