Let’s read a Family Stadium manga

Reading the Wanpaku “Certain Victory” Technique comic for Famista

This caught my eye on my usual scans through Yahoo Auctions and Mercari: A combination manga/strategy guide for the original Family Stadium, which would later be released in North America as R.B.I. Baseball.

What would the story be? What hidden techniques may lie within? How would it handle the lack of NPB team or player licensing?

I haven’t made a full scan or certainly a translation. But I read through it and I’ve shared my favorite bits in the captions in the slideshow below. (I searched around for a scan online, but did not immediately find one).

The full title, in case you want to go searching for more on this, is Wanpaku Comics Hisshou Technique Kanpeki-ban Pro Yakyuu Family Stadium, by Katsuhiko Ohno. Or in Japanese: わんぱっく必勝テクニック完ペキ版プロ野球ファミリースタジアム18/大野克彦

There are kind of a lot of other Famista series manga, including one at least as recent as 2020. If I can track ’em down on the auction sites, I’ll give those a try one day.

More Backyard Baseball re-release news

Backyard Baseball ’97 is out today, a rerelease of the original game. I’d speculated before about the nature of this rerelease, and a Digital Trends interview with the rerelease devs at Mad Cat Studios has now answered a lot of those questions. Using techniques similar to ROM hacks, the game is being run in a wrapper that mimics an older Windows machine. It’s not quite a port to modern PCs, and not quite emulation.

The new release came with several more announcements: First, they did manage to get Steam Deck support up and working, but are still doubtful on the potential of console or Mac releases.

Second, rereleases of several other SCUMM-era Backyard Sports games were announced, including Backyard Baseball ’01, a rerelease of 2001.

2001 was the first game in the series to include MLB logos and real-life players, so the announcement raises a lot of questions not yet answered by its Steam page.

The game description says 31 “Backyardified professional legends” will be included, the same number that were in the original game (one for each team plus a bonus after Griffey was traded to the Reds a few months before release, necessitating a new Mariner be added in A-Rod. Barry Larking was the pre-existing Red.) Originally, the Steam description named three of these players: Jason Giambi, Mark McGwire (misspelled McGuire), and Chipper Jones.

These three were all in the original BB2001 roster. They also happen to be three names recently licensed to appear as legends in The Show. These names were removed from the Steam description a few hours after the announcement.

No MLB team logos or players appear in the video trailer or screenshots on the Steam page. This required some real ROM hacking to accomplish. Look in the background of this shot and you’ll see most of the players are replaced with the “create your own character” placeholder, to avoid showing any pros:

The screenshot does at least include the name “Devil Rays.” It seems likely this release will keep the MLB team names and logos at least, and include some assortment of 31 former pros.

Which pros, though? I’m going to guess at least Barry Bonds will need to be replaced. He has appeared in almost zero video games since withdrawing from the MLBPA licensing agreement in 2004, and he doesn’t seem to be part of the MLB Alumni licensing deals. Other players who were in the original BB2001 but haven’t recently been licensed in video games: Jose Canseco, Nomar Garciaparra, Carlos Beltran, Marty Cordova.

The MLB logo appears in a glimpse of the main menu in the Steam page video trailer. “Online play” is also still visible in the menu, though the Steam description calls it a single-player only game. Unclear if online will be supported in this release or not.

Lots of questions! Curious to see what they end up doing with it.

Another Pawapuro roster editing software

I’ve talked here before about PowerUp, a piece of software for editing MLB Power Pros rosters. Well, if you’re willing to dip your head into Japanese or use Google Translate, you can edit rosters for most of the PlayStation 2/GameCube mainline Pawapuro games as well.

This can be done with the Pawapuro Editan software. There are different versions available for different editions of the game here. Every game in the series from 8 to 2014 is supported (that’s not over 2,000 games. They switched to using years in the middle of that stretch).

Pawapuro Editan software for editing Pawapuro rosters.

YouTube Viewing Guide

  • The Odd Legacy of MLB Power Pros – A nice video essay on the Power Pros series from TheCrazyEven. Some stuff in here I had not heard before about the history of the franchise and some of the mobile-only U.S. MLB Power Pros games.
  • Digical League (PS1) CPU vs. CPU Gameplay – I had never heard of this game until I came across it on Mercari recently. A Squaresoft-published baseball game with cartoon player proportions. The Square-ness of it all was the most charming part: The player condition graphics are differently-colored chocobos, and the outfield ads are for Square games like Final Fantasy and Bushido Blade.
  • Pro Yakyuu Famista Evolution (Switch) Gameplay – Every Namco baseball game is a treasure to me (except the GameCube and Wii ones). This one’s got the simple but classic Famista gameplay and the creative single-player modes you’d expect. Wake me up when The Show adds a JRPG mode.