Friday Starter is a weekly column of news and tidbits from the world of baseball video games—past and present, domestic and foreign.
I’m presenting for SABR on Japanese baseball video games
Mark your calendars, on Thursday April 10th at 8pm Eastern I’ll be hosting a Virtual Meeting with the Society for American Baseball Research. I’ll be talking about the history of Japanese and American baseball video games as they converged and diverged over the generations, leading up to last year’s Pro Yakyuu Spirits game. You can pre-register and get a Zoom invite at this link.
Backyard Baseball ’97 comes to iOS and Android
Previously announced at the Cubs Convention a few months ago, Backyard Baseball ’97 is now out for iOS and Android.
This is, again, pretty close to a straight port of the original Backyard Baseball. There are no graphical changes or remade elements, besides pulling out the Humongous Entertainment logo from the intro and credits. The aspect ratio is unchanged, so you will see black bars on either side of the screen.
Still though, the mouse-driven Backyard Baseball gameplay translates pretty well to touch controls. This version of the game is also $5, compared to $10 on PC.
Pro Yakyuu Spirits 2025 update details
Konami announced the details on the upcoming 2025 season update for Prospi 2024-2025, with a general release date of “end of April.” There don’t seem to be any major new features, and no mention of the much-wanted alternate uniforms that were missing in the original release. But rosters will be updated to how they were as of January 27th 2025.
A few noteworthy items on the list:
- The Steam version has its graphics settings renamed to “performance settings” and moved into the title screen instead of in a startup launcher window. This will probably make the Steam Deck version a little friendlier to use.
- New “Super Resolution” settings, which I’d like to hear more details on
- Lots of new player customization options in Player Edit: new hairstyles (seemingly focused on female options) including ones that prevent the player from wearing a hat. New options to add eye black, and new pitching and batting forms.
- No details yet, but the Konami Twitter mentioned 12 new legend players, including Hideki Matsui:
April Fool’s Roundup
It wasn’t the most detailed thing in the world, but dutifully reporting the Pawapuro team’s April Fool’s joke this year:
The app version became Jikkyou Powerful Keri Yakyuu, or Live Powerful Kickball. This really meant only a new splash screen as you started the app:
MLB The Show 25 had a one-day set of missions in the Diamond Dynasty mode for April Fool’s called the Common Courtesy program.
This tasked players with achieving certain dubious statistical feats with players rated 64 overall or below. Almost all of these goals were negative baseball plays: strikeout 15 times, get caught stealing five times, give up hits and runs, etc.
The rewards were a set of very low-rated cards for former players, mostly meant to represent the final dying sputter of that player’s career. The 1984 Oakland A’s version of Joe Morgan, for example (.244/.356/.351, could be worse).
Completing everything takes just a couple hours, and requires more than zero thought to get through: What’s the best way to make three errors with your second baseman? I ended up throwing endless sinkers and lightly tapping the throw meter to try to get him to airmail it, and eventually that worked enough times.
Pawapuro & Prospi Café at Meiji Jingu Stadium
If you happen to be going to a Yakult Swallows game in the near future, you can visit the Pawapuro & Prospi Café, where they sell a few themed food items and hand out Pawapuro stickers to customers. You can see a video promoting the cafe at Meiji Jingi Stadium here.
A few of the items on offer:
- Pawapuro-kun churros
- Choushi-kun (the blocky mascot from Pro Yakyuu Spirits games) pink grape fruit sour and blue salt sour drinks
- Most disturbingly, Dr. Daijoubu’s snack set, featuring chicken katsu, carrot, and cucumber
Buy something from the stand and you’ll get one of these stickers featuring characters from the Pawapuro games:
YouTube Viewing Guide
- Pawapuro HEX (Arcade) Gameplay – This was my own contribution to April Fool’s this year: A recording of Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu EX in current MAME, where a hilarious audio bug makes a creepypasta out of the series’ cheery chiptunes.
- MLB Power Pros 2008 music in the style of Ken Griffey for SNES – From FigureFarter comes this remake of the main season mode music from MLB Power Pros 2008 in a soundfont from Ken Griffey Jr. for SNES.
- Pro Yakyuu Rising (iOS) Gameplay – A new NPB-set mobile game from Com2uS, clearly along the lines of their other titles Com2uS Pro Yagu and MLB Rivals. Very similar to other games in the space already, but nice-looking, and the mascots in the background of the main menu are a nice touch.
Song of the Week
“Baseball to Elvis Presley” by Chocolat