Streamer k4sen dons the mo-cap gear
In the video above, Japanese Youtube and Twitch streamer k4sen goes through the motion capture process for the new Pro Yakyuu Spirits 2024-2025. His own goofy take on a walkup animation, batting stance, and home run performance are all in the game now.
In case you were wondering, do they still do the ping pong ball suits after all these years? It turns out the answer is yes, though the hands get a lot more ping pong balls than they used to.
Motion capture has long been the one glimpse we get of any piece of the dev process, so there are lots of examples to compare this one against:
It may not be the most cinematically interesting thing in the world, but I’d like to see some behind the scenes videos that show the studio’s main offices sometime. Not everything can be the Double Fine documentary, but a quick look at the real workstations or software involved would be interesting.
Kofie visits a Backyard Baseball pop-up
Kofie of Secret Base shot some footage of an event for the new Backyard Sports revival which has been much discussed here, who were promoting a new merch line partnered with Driveway Paradise.
No real news for the upcoming new game from the event, but it’s interesting to see some larger-than-life props pulled out of what seemed like a pretty small game when I was a kid.
Somewhat disturbingly, laptops were set up at the event to play their rerelease of the original Backyard Baseball, but apparently with no mouse? At least Kofie is using a trackpad and the keyboard to play. It’s a mouse-driven game, folks, get them a mouse and a mousepad.
YouTube Viewing Guide
- Sports game YouTuber KevinGohD played through every MLB 2K game in one video
- I played Major Wii: Perfect Closer, infamous in Japan for its low quality and bugs. I didn’t get it in my footage, but if you want to see the most famous bug, check this video out.
- I tried out Baseball Max, a new online game from Strat-o-Matic. My experience was a little buggy and strange, and I hate subscription price models, but the ability to play teams from any season online in a league of like-minded baseball simmers makes some sense.