I want to talk about Gachinko Pro Yakyuu
I’ve got a gameplay video going up tomorrow for Gachinko Pro Yakyuu, a 2002 PS2 baseball game, released only in Japan. But I can’t wait until then to talk about it.
The game is by Now Production, an Osaka-based dev with one of the longest track records for baseball games out there. Many of their titles were Japan-only like this one, but a few shipped Stateside: The Sporting News Baseball for SNES, the well-regarded Little League World Series Baseball games from 2008 and 2010, and most famously of all, Mario Superstar Baseball for the GameCube (along with Namco).
This dev knows what they’re doing, making snappy, fun action baseball games. But this game is totally different. It’s a command battler. A tactics game. You control the pitcher and batter, but in a totally menu-driven game. Gachinko means head-to-head. That’s apt because this is a game entirely about the mind game battles between pitcher and hitter.
When hitting, the game looks like this:
That plus-sign cursor lets you select which part of the zone you think the pitch will be in. You’ll get the best results for the middle part of your cursor, but will make contact with the other four regions the cursor touches. You are also guessing which type of pitch the pitcher will throw. This affects the quality of your contact and the likelihood that you will swing and miss on pitches that don’t overlap with your cursor.
You can also choose to attempt a power swing, which narrows your cursor down to only one of the nine strike zone boxes.
The E-S letter grades reflect your hitter’s skill in that sector of the zone, which helps give a sense of where the pitcher is likely to attack. With the trade-off being that even successful contact in a zone with a low rating isn’t likely to lead to much of a result.
I think it’s a cool idea to make an entire game out of the “Guess pitch” feature. Put all the info in front of you, have benefits and drawbacks to different choices for some push-and-pull, and play some mind games.
As the pitcher, your menu is pretty similar, but aiming for only a single zone (though the pitch can stray into a different one depending on your control). Though not clear from the picture, you can also aim outside the strike zone:
Of course, the typical strategic options are also available: Infield shifts, warming up relievers, bunts, hit and run, etc.
The game also looks and sounds great. It’s got a cel shading style that I can’t remember in any other baseball game, and it’s got a jungle electronic music soundtrack. And although it’s text-only, the play-by–play commentary is very detailed and specific. Cool game.
Now that I’ve expressed admiration for every part of the game, it’s time to come clean: Gachinko Pro Yakyuu is no fun to play at all.
No one can hit. The guessing game at the core of everything needs to favor pitching, because hitters in baseball aren’t successful most of the time. But hitters have too many disadvantages:
- Your cursor can only cover 5/9ths of the zone at most. If the pitch ends up in a different zone, it’s a nearly guaranteed strike.
- Pitchers have huge arsenals of pitches, making it difficult to guess the right one. If you guess the wrong pitch type, and the pitch isn’t in your cursor zone, you will always swing and miss.
- Pitchers get to choose where to throw, with perfect information of where the hitter is least comfortable. Even if the hitter makes contact in an E zone, they will likely just ground out or pop out harmlessly.
- Due to this near-perfect control, it’s almost impossible to unintentionally walk a hitter.
- Pitchers can throw out of the zone as well. Suddenly 9 potential zones becomes 21. In order to avoid a swing and miss against a pitch out of the zone, the hitter has to guess the pitch type correctly, something like a 20% chance.
- Even after how hard it is to make contact, results on balls in play seem mostly realistic. Hitters will ground out or fly out regularly when making correct guesses.
- Power swings will get better results on balls in play. But you have to guess exactly the right zone to make contact. Something like a 10% chance.
So the game gets filled with long pitcher’s duels. And the differences between hitters are pretty small due to the mechanics, basically only affecting the results of balls in play (in a game with tons of swing and miss). Games tend to be decided by one lucky guess with a power swing.
It’s also tempting to get X-COM syndrome, and think the computer is cheating against you. The game has perfect knowledge of where you’re going to swing, so it’s hard to trust a guessing game against it. It could use some kind of visual die on screen to lend some credibility to the RNG you’re playing against. The Bottom of the 9th board game and its computer game version have something like this.
There is also a very cool-looking but very hard to understand Dai Draft Mode. You go around a map of Japan recruiting players against all the other teams. It looks like this:
I wandered around in a confused haze trying to play this mode, but to be fair I’m not fluent in Japanese. It may have just sailed over my head due to language barrier.
So I really did not enjoy my time playing the game, but I love the ideas and the look and the sound, and I’ve enjoyed every other Now Production baseball game I’ve ever played. In summary, Gachinko Pro Yakyuu is a land of contrasts.
Bitball delayed
Bitball is an upcoming pixel art mobile baseball game. It’s gotten some decent attention on social media. The game was originally announced for 2024, but the creator has delayed expectations out to 2025.
How fast are pitches in MLB The Show, really?
I enjoyed this video from Jarodactyl, who does a lot of videos experimenting with The Show, among other general baseball videos.
I’ve complimented The Show before for being the most realistic plate discipline simulator out there. But it’s humbling to do the math and realize just how much more reaction time you’re getting than the pros do. Give it a watch.