Friday Starter is a weekly column of news and tidbits from the world of baseball video games—past and present, domestic and foreign.
Another glimpse of an unreleased GameCube baseball game
Another piece of ephemera from the unreleased 2005 game Nintendo Pennant Chase Baseball surfaced this week on eBay. Coming from seller gba177, available for Buy It Now at $2,999.99 is a promotional box for the Nintendo-published game by Exile Interactive. While it’s a GameCube box, there’s no disc inside, and the front box art is mirrored on the back.
The box appears to be signed by cover star David Ortiz. The signature matches other items signed by Ortiz, and the known cover art doesn’t include any facsimile Ortiz signature.
While an oversized promo box previously appeared in an Ortiz estate sale, this is the first GameCube case-style promo box known to the internet.
I messaged the eBay seller to ask where he ran into this item. The answer: at a stall full of sports and video game items, including many empty boxes, at a flea market called Jake’s in Pennsylvania. So it won’t be easy to track the provenance back to anyone in particular. The same eBay seller is also selling a Best Buy Nintendo kiosk cartridge, so it’s possible this promo box also came from a Best Buy via the same flea market stall.
Learning more about Pennant Chase has been a pet project of this site. I can confidently say this 30-30 encyclopedia page has more info on the game than anywhere else on the internet. And these two blog posts have covered the stages of new info coming in.
If you know more about the game that you want to share, or even just a memory of playing it back at E3 2005 or something, send an email to nate@30-30.club.
How are baseball games running on Switch 2?
The Nintendo Switch 2 is out now, and more than 3.5 million consoles have been sold already. However, there isn’t a ton of new exclusive software out just yet. After you’ve played some Mario Kart World or the Welcome Tour, the main appeal is seeing how original Switch games run on the new machine.
For the most popular title out there, The Famicast uploaded a comparison video for Switch 1 vs. Switch 2 on MLB The Show 25:
As you can see from the video, the crunchy pixellated look is unchanged, but the framerate is much, much smoother. There’s a decent chance with this game still actively supported that there could be a Switch 2 patch to get even more improvement, so we’ll cross our fingers.
R.B.I. Baseball 21 was the last hurrah of MLBAM’s R.B.I. revival. If you’re still holding onto a copy and never bought into The Show, this game certainly runs better than it did previously.
Super Mega Baseball 4 is EA’s latest baseball game, and arguably the best English-language baseball title on the Switch, at least for local multiplayer. And yet… It was the one game in my library that said “unsupported” for Switch 2 due to “problems found with progression” when I looked at its store page. But if you pop in a Switch 1 cartridge of the game, it will download and launch without warning you about this apparent compatibility issue. A bit strange.
I recorded gameplay this past week of Konami’s latest titles for Switch. First up is Powerful Pro Yakyuu 2024-2025:
I chose the Kintetsu Buffaloes out of hope that their hat texture would be fixed, but alas:
Still, the game runs with an excellent framerate, much more comparable to performance on the PS4/PS5 than before. The resolution and textures aren’t at the PS4’s level, and the framerate was always at least consistent, but there are definite improvements.
Next up is eBaseball Pro Yakyuu Spirits 2021: Grand Slam. This one looks a bit dated now after Pro Yakyuu Spirits 2024-2025 blew everyone’s socks off. You can compare against this recording of the original Switch version.
This game always ran with a great framerate, but with muddy models that looked a bit worse than the PlayStation Vita versions earlier in the same series. So I wasn’t able to notice any obvious improvements, and I have no delusions that a Switch 2 patch will be coming. Now we wait to see if Konami might bring a new series entry to Switch 2, possibly in 2026 (they didn’t announce anything during their game announcement show this week…).
New game Indoor Baseball set for 2025 release
A new pre-release title called Indoor Baseball appeared on Steam back in April, including a demo. The game comes from Snow Day Software, who previously published a similar game called Indoor Kickball which has 36 reviews on Steam and Positive reviews.
Indoor Baseball looks to be a casual, smaller title that exaggerates the real experience of playing simple 1v1 baseball as a kid against your brother. The gameplay is only pitcher vs. batter, set in a suburban household (or some themed environments like a haunted house) with destructible/interactable items that your ball can hit around the room with various effects. The trailer also shows some pretty detailed animations for things like hitting the pitcher with a batted ball and home run celebrations.
The game’s release date is announced for 2025, with no further specifics yet.
Song of the Week
This week’s music comes form a Japanese band called 8bit boys that does Famicom game music. By far the most popular video on their YouTube channel is their performance for R.B.I. Baseball / Famista. I thought “Sure, it’s a popular game with iconic music, but why would this video be so popular?” Well:
The guitarist does an incredible job replicating the game’s sound effects with his instrument. Pitches, fly balls, and even umpire calls are replicated. Really fun.