Where to get Japanese baseball video games

 April 11, 2022  Posted in How-to 459 Views

One of the main reasons I created this site was to talk about Japanese baseball video games. Overall, I tend to prefer the fun-first gameplay of Japanese baseball games over the more simulation-minded American ones. And it’s crazy to me that huge game companies like Namco and Konami have spent decades making big production value baseball games that rarely come to the United States.

Here’s a guide to how I’ve been buying and playing Japanese baseball video games. Hopefully this will help others who want to enjoy the same games.

Where can I buy Japanese video games?

  • Directly from digital storefronts – If you don’t need the physical box and manual and you’re looking for recently-released games, the PlayStation Store or Nintendo eShop are great options. Generally you will need to make a free Japanese account on the digital storefront and then purchase a gift card at a slight markup from a store like Playasia to use for payment.
  • Used game stores – This will depend a lot on where you live. In my area, I have Lost Ark Video Games, which has a shockingly big selection of Japanese games, and the baseball games are pretty cheap. If you have a similar good used game store, that’s the best way to go.

    GameStop does not accept trade-ins from other regions, so you won’t find anything there. There is a franchise called Play N Trade that very occasionally has import games.

    If you live in or near New York or Los Angeles, this is much easier. New York has Book Off, a Japanese used bookstore that has games, along with a decent number of independent game stores that have imports. Los Angeles has Little Tokyo, which had very cheap used Japanese games the last time I was there.
  • Specialty import sites – Playasia is the king in this area, with a wide selection and occasionally good prices. Amiami and Yesasia are two other competitors but they’re less focused on video games so their selection is nowhere near as good. These sites let you buy Japanese games, especially recent ones, with U.S. dollars. Be aware that these items still have to ship from Japan, so delivery won’t be as quick as any U.S.-based option.
  • Auction sites like eBay or Mercari U.S. – Unless the game is very rare or obscure, eBay will almost always have at least one listing for it, even Japanese baseball games. Mercari is a secondhand goods app that has a decent selection as well, but for Japanese baseball games, generally eBay has a better selection and better prices. Neither will be as cheap as a used game store, generally.
  • Yahoo! Auctions – Yahoo Auctions is the primary auction website in Japan, since eBay Japan no longer exists. Generally, listings on Yahoo Auctions will not ship overseas, so you need to use a proxy seller like Buyee, White Rabbit Express, or J-Subculture to have something shipped from Yahoo Auctions to North America. Generally, you should go in expecting to pay something like $10 in additional fees when using a proxy service.
  • Mercari JP – Mercari is a Japanese company, and the app is more popular in Japan than in North America, though generally its focus is on vintage clothing. You can go to jp.mercari.com to browse Japanese listings, and the site has a partnership with Buyee for shipping to North America directly from their site. Not everything on the site is available for purchase through Buyee, for some reason.

What do I search to find Japanese baseball video games?

If you know what game you’re looking for specifically, obviously searching the exact game title is best. If you’re searching on a Japanese site, you can copy the game title in Japanese from a site like this one, or Wikipedia, and paste it into the search bar.

If you’re casting a wide net for any Japanese baseball video game on English-language sites, “yakyuu” is generally the best search term, meaning “baseball.” It can be spelled just yakyu or yakyū but yakyuu is by far most common. There are still a decent number of games that don’t have yakyuu in the title, especially the ones set in high school, for whatever reason. There are also occasionally listings on places like eBay from someone who can’t read Japanese and just enters “Japanese baseball video game” or something generic instead of the real title. No perfect way to find these, but just a note from my experience.

If you’re casting a wide net on Japanese-language sites, 野球ゲーム is a pretty good search term to use. That’s how you write “yakyuu game.” You will get some irrelevant results for baseball-themed card games, but it’s better than being too specific. Searching for just 野球 (yakyuu) gives lots of irrelevant results for baseball clothing and books, etc. Anything more specific like テレビゲーム野球 (“TV game yakyuu,” the equivalent of searching “baseball video game”) leaves too many items out in my experience.

If you’re looking for a certain series of games, here are the major ones, all still ongoing:

  • Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu (実況パワフルプロ野球), a Konami series going back to the Super Nintendo. The last few releases have dropped the “Jikkyou” part of the title and replaced it with “eBaseball.” Cartoon art style. Each game has its own unique story/life sim/visual novel in the Success mode. A couple of games in the series came out in North America as MLB Power Pros.
  • Pro Yakyuu Spirits (プロ野球スピリッツ), another Konami series, this one with a realistic art style.
  • Family Stadium or Famista series (ファミリースタジアム or ファミスタ), a Namco series going back to the NES. Also cartoon art style. The original R.B.I. Baseball on the NES was the original game in this series, then R.B.I. became its own separate series starting with R.B.I. Baseball 2. Some games in the series on non-Nintendo platforms are called World Stadium instead (ワールドスタジアム). This series has a strong, wacky personality and a deep devotion to Namco’s classic arcade games.

Which of my consoles can play Japanese video games?

Many video game consoles or games are region-protected, meaning games produced for one region can’t be played on a console produced for a different region (for example, a Japanese PlayStation 1 game can’t be played on an American PlayStation). Generally, these are the regions:

  • North and South America form one region (sometimes called NTSC-U)
  • Europe and a few other countries like South Africa and Australia (sometimes called PAL)
  • Japan and most of the rest of Asia are another region (sometimes called NTSC-J)
  • Generally China is a separate region all to itself (NTSC-C)

Not all game consoles are region-protected, thankfully. The following consoles are region-free without any effort on your part, allowing you to play Japanese games on a North American console or vice versa:

  • 3DO
  • Game Boy/Game Boy Color/Game Boy Advance
  • Neo Geo/Neo Geo CD
  • Neo Geo Pocket/Neo Geo Pocket Color
  • Nintendo DS (DSi and 3DS games are region-locked)
  • Nintendo Switch
  • Phillips CD-i
  • PlayStation 3 (physical PS1 and PS2 games played on PS3 via backwards compatibility are still region-locked)
  • PlayStation 4
  • PlayStation 5
  • PlayStation Portable
  • PlayStation Vita/PlayStation TV
  • Xbox One
  • Xbox Series X/S

Other consoles are at least partially region-locked. Many consoles have fairly simple workarounds. Below I’m including general steps for the consoles I cover.

Nintendo 64: The N64 uses a very simple physical region lock based on where the tabs are on each cartridge. It will require a GameBit screwdriver, but region-modding an N64 is about as simple as taking it apart and putting it back together again. If you don’t already own an N64, this region mod is so common that it doesn’t really cost you any more to get a region-modded console than a non-region-modded one on a site like eBay or Mercari.

Nintendo Entertainment System/Family Computer: The traditional “toaster” NES has a lockout chip. You can disconnect a specific pin from that chip to remove the region lockout. The top-loader NES model does not have this lockout chip. However, Japanese cartridges need a 60 to 72-pin adapter to fit into American connectors, on either the top-loader or toaster. These adapters are pretty cheap to get now, about $15.

Nintendo Wii: There are various software hack methods or boot discs that can be used to play another region’s game on the Nintendo Wii. The most popular homebrew/hack method requires a copy of The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. There are too many options to go into detail here, and I don’t currently have a recommendation on which to use.

Nintendo Wii U: There are various software hack methods for playing another region’s games on the Wii U. Details can be found here.

PlayStation 1: There are a wide variety of mod chip and disc swap options available for playing Japanese discs on an American PS1. Maybe it makes me Mr. Moneybags, but I prefer spending ~$100 on a Japanese PS2 (which is backwards-compatible with PS1 games) to any of those more complicated options.

PlayStation 2: There are a variety of methods using mod chips, disc swaps (Swap Magic or Cogswap), or a hard drive loaded with dumped .iso files. Again, these were all a little too fiddley for my liking, so what I ended up doing was using a Japanese slim-model PS2 (the slim model’s power adapter is more America-friendly than other models). They cost about $100.

Sega Genesis/Mega Drive: The cheapest, easiest solution is buying a Game Genie. Games plugged into a Game Genie work regardless of region protection.

Super Nintendo/Super Famicom: Very similar to the N64 steps above, there are small tabs inside the cartridge connector that make for a physical region lock. With a GameBit screwdriver, you can disassemble the console, remove these tabs, then put it back together again. Or you can get a Game Genie and similarly remove the tabs from it that prevent the Super Famicom game from connecting, then always plug your Japanese game into a Game Genie, then plug that Game Genie into the console.

TurboGrafx-16/PC Engine: CDs are region-free but cartridges (HuCards) are not. It is possible to region mod the console to fix this. There is only one baseball game released in the U.S. for the TurboGrafx-16, and the U.S. consoles are rare and expensive, so my personal solution is just to buy a PC Engine (the Japanese version of the console).

Sega Dreamcast: While there are several methods available, the method I use is a simple boot disc. I burned a copy of Code Breaker onto a CD. When I want to play a Japanese game on my American Dreamcast, I insert the Code Breaker CD, press Play Game on the menu that appears, then take out the Code Breaker disc and insert Pro Yakyuu Team wo Tsukurou or whatever I want to play. The hardest step was finding a store that would sell me CD-Rs (I thought this would be easy without resorting to online shopping, but I had no luck).