New additions to the Pawapuro 2022 roster
The latest roster update has hit eBaseball Powerful Pro Yakyuu 2022, bringing the NPB rosters up to date with how they were at the end of March. For American fans (and probably Japanese ones too), this mostly means the addition of two guys who’ve received MVP votes in MLB: Trevor Bauer and Marwin Gonzalez. Here are their attribute pages:
Marwin’s strikeout-prone but streaky, can play a decent first base, second base, or outfield, and has some decent power.
Bauer’s attributes are strong but a little bland. Fastball, two-seam, good slider, and a really good power curve. Some special attributes that increase the fastball life, strikeouts, breaking ball sharpness, etc. The blue/red ability is flyball pitcher. You might have expected a red ability to reflect his attitude problems on the field or controversy off the field, but nope, just a regular guy.
In real life, both have disappointed so far in Japan: Marwin’s slashing .242/.292/.461, with enough power to get him to a league average-ish line. Bauer has a shocking 8.40 ERA after three starts and is going down to the ni-gun developmental team for a bit to get straightened out.
Also added were OB (“old boy,” meaning former players) versions of Kodai Senga, Shintaro Fujinami, and Masataka Yoshida who all went to MLB this offseason. As with all the Japanese stars who make the leap to MLB, they will remain in Pawapuro as unlockable characters, and they can appear as signable free agents in later years of the Pennant mode, which is a really cool feature. None of their attributes had any huge changes since the end of last season, but you can check out their attributes here.
If you want to see the other ex-MLBers who got added to Pawapuro 2022 in the previous roster update, check them out here.
Baseball video game for the blind
I talked about Championship Baseball by Jim Kitchen a little in a previous Friday Starter, and I finally got decent enough at the game to feel good about recording a video:
It’s an audio-only game made by a blind (and now deceased) game programmer, Jim Kitchen. The main mechanic is timing your swing by listening to the stereo pitch as it moves from left to right, swinging when the pitch is about 90% of the way to the right. Different pitches have different sound effects that move at different speeds, and it works surprisingly well.
There were a couple of bugs during this record: I set my team’s name as “30 30 Club,” and the number at the start of the name led to a small issue where the scoreline is read out as “Robots two hundred and thirty, Thirty Club 1,” for example, making it sound as if the other team had a ton more runs than they should have. And I’m pretty sure towards the end of the game one of my runners managed to survive and score despite being forced out at second on an attempted double play. The out counted, but the runner managed to stick around, somehow.
Just a couple of tiny sprite gifs for ya
YouTube Viewing Guide
- Really this is a channel recommendation but I’ll link their latest video on the Little League World Series Wii game. Not the Expert has one-thousand times as many subscribers as me so it’s silly for me to recommend, but still, if you’re looking for some fun highlight reel videos that cover a broad array of old-ish sports games (mostly baseball and football), check it out.
- Ken Griffey Jr.’s Winning Run (SNES) Gameplay (love the Killer Instinct-style music in this thing)
- ESPN Baseball Tonight (Sega CD) Gameplay