No new games in the collection this week. Plenty of work to do sorting through everything I got in LA last week.
Speaking of games I bought in LA, I have a copy of the hilariously-titled The Baseball 2003 Battle Ball Park Sengen Perfect Play Pro Yakyuu on my desk. I have no idea why Konami decided on that title. Effectively the next game in the same series would be called Pro Yakyuu Spirits 2004, much simpler.
What are the best baseball video game titles? Let’s award some superlatives in several different categories:
Longest Title:
– At least in terms of English characters, the longest title I have on record is in fact The Baseball 2003 Battle Ball Park Sengen Perfect Play Pro Yakyuu. It’s not much shorter in Japanese characters, either.
– Another contender is Kodawari Saihai Simulation: Ocha no Ma Pro Yakyuu 2010-nendoban for Nintendo DS. Can’t say I totally understand the title. Ocha no Ma Pro Yakyuu or “Tea Room Pro Baseball” is a good core of a title if there weren’t so many other words in there.
– The longest English-language title I can find is Sports Illustrated Championship Football & Baseball, if you’re willing to count that. If you don’t like that one, you’re not going to prefer the next on my list, Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 – The Official Video Game, which is at best about 10% a baseball game. The longest English-language pure baseball game I can find is Major League Baseball Featuring Ken Griffey Jr., (that’s the N64 one, one letter longer than the SNES one, Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball). A little cumbersome, though I’m disappointed I can’t find one worse.
Brevity Award:
– Ce-Pa 2001, named after the Central and Pacific Leagues in Japan, isn’t the shortest title but it certainly feels the most abbreviated from an American perspective.
– MLB 99 and MLB 98 by Sony are tied for the shortest titles, whether or not you choose to drop an apostrophe in front of the years in the titles (Nothing in the box art does on either game, but a lot of game databases online still throw an apostrophe on MLB ’98 anyway).
Best Vibe:
– Pro Yakyuu Greatest Nine ’97 Make Miracle has a fun little subtitle.
– Super Bases Loaded 3: License to Steal has to be the only baseball video game with a James Bond-inspired subtitle.
– Mr. Pro Yakyuu Perfect is a baseball management game for the PC-98 and maybe my single favorite baseball game title.
Bad Vibes:
– The World’s Greatest Baseball Game is a 1985 baseball game for old computers, including DOS, Apple II, and Commodore 64 that is unfortunately just brutal to play.
– HardBall! has both confusing mid-word camel case and an exclamation point in the title, two things that force me to reconfirm the game’s title every time I have to write it to make sure I have everything correct.
Near Misses:
– Cyber Stadium Series: Base Wars. Base Wars is good, but Cyber Stadium Series ruins it, I think. Even just Cyber Stadium: Base Wars would be an all-time title.
– Dave Winfield’s Batter Up! I love a possessive in a video game title, like Sid Meier’s Civilization, but the exclamation point makes it a very, very near miss. At least the exclamation point goes well with the phrase “Batter Up.”
– Super Professional Base Ball. This is the Japanese title of Super Bases Loaded, Jaleco’s 16-bit baseball game, and unfortunately I cannot ignore the space in-between Base and Ball on the box art and title screen. As much as we might all like to pretend the game’s title is Super Professional Baseball, it just isn’t.
All-Around Best Titles:
– Backyard Baseball. It’s got alliteration and the back-to-back spondees give it a nice meter too. And it conveys the amateur kids’ baseball setting right away. Simple, perfect title.
– Gekikuukan Pro Yakyuu At The End of the Century 1999, by Squaresoft. I guess I would translate the title as “Space-Drama Pro Baseball,” which makes no sense but I love it. Maybe there’s a reasonable translation that I’m not aware of, but I hope not! Add in a perhaps-wordy but awesome dramatic English subtitle and this one wins it all, for me.