The goal of this site, eventually, is to record and chronicle every baseball video game. While inching towards that goal, I’ve learned it’s sometimes hard to tell what is or isn’t a baseball video game. To ritualistically cleanse my brain of some borderline games, I’m going to mention some non-baseball games here.
I reserve the right to change my mind on these in the future (especially if anyone has any feedback). Like the Hall of Fame, there’s a semi-permeable barrier. The worst guys in the Hall are regularly going to be worse than the best guys out of the Hall. I’m generally a Big Channel guy, and have already recorded some borderline cases before, so I can’t claim to be ideologically consistent here. On with the list.
Butterfly Soup and Butterfly Soup 2
These two games are critically-acclaimed indie visual novels by Brianna Lei. The official summary for both games is “Gay girls playing baseball and falling in love.” I’ve only played the first game, but it’s great. Each new character comes to life in the first page they’re introduced. I have tried this, and it’s really hard.
This game is famous enough among certain crowds to have made it into a New Yorker crossword puzzle.
Baseball is sort of the organizing principle all the characters coalesce around, and there are scenes where baseball is played. And I have recorded other visual novels for the channel, like My9Swallows and Doki Doki Pretty League. Those other games made it in because of the official NPB team connection in the former case, and the (admittedly light) team management/simulation mechanics in the latter.
You’re never really controlling the outcome of a baseball game in Butterfly Soup, so it’s stayed off the channel for now.
I’ll eventually get around to playing the second one. And if has a baseball management minigame or something, then I think I’ll have no choice but to record both games.
Home Run Solitaire
I’m not against a baseball game with unusual mechanics, like the Peggle-ish Bad Hop Baseball or the Puyo Puyo-like Pro Yakyuu Nettou Puzzle Stadium. If you’re controlling the outcome of a baseball game, for me, that’s a baseball game.
I just picked up Home Run Solitaire on sale, and will try it out soon. But from the Steam page, it looks like it’s a solitaire game with a baseball story and imagery, but there’s no mechanic to connect the solitaire results directly into baseball results, exactly. I think this one will fall just slightly outside my criteria.
OFF
Off is a fairly famous Belgian-made RPG Maker game. The main character is a baseball player archetype known as The Batter. This game’s in the news after a recent announcement of a remaster coming next year for PC and Switch.
I’ve only played about an hour of this one. To my knowledge, the only baseball connection is the design of the main character. I like the look of it, though I don’t think it has a chance of appearing elsewhere on this site.
Ninja Baseball Bat Man / Yakyuu Kakutou League Man
Ninja Baseball Bat Man is a 1993 arcade beat-’em-up with a pervasive baseball theme. The wacky “Power Rangers meets baseball” concept and great art design have made it lastingly popular online. It’s still kind of hard to believe this is a genuine ’90s arcade game that was released in the United States, and not a stylish indie title from 2014, or a hip comic you ran across on Tumblr one time.
Really cool game, though I can’t convince myself to call it a “baseball video game” and record a playthrough for the channel.
Pro Yakyuu? Satsujin Jiken!
Pro Baseball? Murder Case! is a 1988 Capcom Famicom game. I have never played any of it to be honest, but I think I get the joke: The Famicom was full of copycat baseball games (Famista and its many clones) and murder mysteries (Portopia and its many clones). So what if we made a game that combines the two?
Your main character is a professional baseball player, but I don’t think there is any baseball gameplay. It looks like a murder mystery adventure game, with a top-down visual style like JRPGs of the time.
I’ll be curious to try this someday and see how specific the gags about other Famicom baseball games might get. Until then, it’s a little bit of an annoyance for always showing up when I search for baseball games on a Japanese source.
Capcom would eventually give in and release a Famicom baseball game, just like every other Japanese dev: Mizushima Shinji no Daikoushien, in 1990.
Tribe Nine
This is an upcoming game based on an anime of the same name, by Kazutaka Kodaka, the Danganronpa guy. I watched the first episode of the anime: It’s about a cyberpunk future Tokyo where teen gangs have decided to settle all their disputes with Extreme Baseball, a version of our beloved sport that includes laser swords, parkour, and hand-to-hand combat.
The game has a closed beta on Windows right now, and is coming out on Windows, iOS, and Android sometime in 2025.
I haven’t played it yet, but going by the game’s website and Steam page, it appears to be mostly an action RPG with maybe some minor baseball element. I’m most curious about the screenshot I posted above, which shows a lot of baseball game-like UI elements.
Diabolical Pitch
Can’t believe I forgot about this one, a Kinect game from Suda51. This video is a pretty good way to get a sense of the game:
You play as a pitcher, who throws baseballs at over-the-top enemies. And your human body controls the action through the Kinect.
Suda’s games include a lot of little baseball elements. As Baseball Prospectus has talked about before, No More Heroes has baseball all over it. And Suda’s on record in A Profound Waste of Time with another idea for a baseball game.
Shippuu! Iron Leaguer!
Based on a combination sports/mecha anime of the same name, this Game Boy game is mostly a side-scroller with little sports minigames for baseball, soccer, etc. There is one tiny bit of the game with a side-on batting boss battle:
Baseball Riot
Another game that definitely has annoyed me by showing up constantly in my search results, though it’s not really a baseball game. There are a few other games like this on Steam, that have baseball in the title and probably involve a baseball bat, but aren’t really “baseball games.” Baseball Riot is a physics-based puzzle game, a little bit like Angry Birds, and a sequel to Tennis in the Face by the same dev.
It makes me wonder if “baseball” is a common enough search term on game stores (I would guess especially mobile stores) that it’s tempting to churn out anything that includes the sport’s name in the title. Not sure.
If so, I wonder why not churn out a baseball game instead. Bitball has been getting a lot of social media attention, even with pixel art becoming gauche in the indie scene these days. The people yearn for a competent indie baseball game on mobile and Steam.