MLB Pro Spirit out now
It’s not every day you get a new Konami-developed MLB game, so I wanted to at least mention that eBaseball: MLB Pro Spirit is out now for iOS and Android, in North America at least. European players will need to get more creative and find a download link for the game somewhere, I’m afraid.
I’m not much of a mobile game guy, personally. But it exceeded my expectations on my small time with the game in the video above. The online has some actual juice to it, unlike most mobile games where early games either pit you against easy bots or 4-year-olds who haven’t quite developed the fine motor skills for gaming on the iPad.
The graphics and player likenesses are of course nowhere near the quality of Pro Yakyuu Spirits 2024-2025, but that’s no surprise. Now we all cross our fingers that somehow this leads to a full-quality Konami MLB console and/or PC game in future.
Want to Play a Catch?
I ran into this browser game lately in a video by the Japanese YouTuber Jack-o-Rantan:
With play instructions in English or Japanese, Play a Catch? is a Unity browser game by Takke and Suiden, built around 2-player online co-operative play. You and someone else you’re matched with online both stand along a riverbank with a baseball and one glove each. Then, with simple physics and controls, you can throw the ball around and “have a catch.”
The music evokes nostalgia, and the simple human connection built around the game has a sweet, sentimental effect. There are basic emotes you can leave to express a little more humanity. And it’s not hard for the game to devolve into little metagames wordlessly communicated between you and your partner. “Let’s just chuck it as hard as we can then see who gets to it first,” or “Let’s try to do a diving catch only,” or “Let’s roll it on the ground instead of tossing it in the air for a bit.”
Somehow it all comes together into more than the sum of its parts.
There is also a Play a Match? Play a Catch 2, which turns the same basic premise into a silly one-on-one guns-blazing shootout. If you’d prefer that.
Type-in games preserved by Gaming Alexandria
I haven’t honestly tried recording either of these yet, but Gaming Alexandria found two type-in baseball games for the Sinclair ZX81 and posted about them on their site:
Both games were published in the magazine Mycom BASIC in 1982, with their code written all out in front of you so you can type it into your computer yourself to replicate the game.
YouTube Viewing Guide
- Pro Yakyuu Netsusta 2007 (PS2) Gameplay – I was very happy to be able to show off the Namco Stars team in this game. Pac-Man and Galaga have never looked more cursed.
- Pro Yakyuu Netsusta 2007 (PS2) Famista Mode Gameplay – I so wish there were still new Namco baseball games so we could get an official R.B.I. Baseball with updated NPB rosters every year.
- My9Swallows: Topstars League (Switch) Intro – Somehow I neglected to upload the intro cinematic for the year’s best-titled video game until now. As a reminder, this is an otome game that officially licensed one NPB team, the Yakult Swallows.