Bitball has a release date
Bitball is an upcoming pixel art baseball game for mobile platforms that has continued to attract some real attention on social media. The game was originally announced to release in 2024, but was delayed several months back. But now, March 12, 2025 is the new release date.
Not a ton of new detail in the trailer, but we can see that the game has stand-ins for each MLB team but no licensed logos or players. The looks resemble something like Retro Bowl, with a sort of idealized 8-bit graphic style.
You can still play the home run derby demo in browser here, or follow the game’s progress on Twitter, Reddit, or Discord.
New “By the Numbers” section in the 30-30.club encyclopedia
Showing off a small new feature on certain pages on the encyclopedia part of this site. By the Numbers, which collects a few bits of info about baseball video games for an at-a-glance look. For an example, check the Prospi 2024-2025 page:
Interesting to compare between games and eras too, to see where certain features are objectively getting better or worse over time.
Two more not-quite-baseball games
Of course, days after I finish my definitive list of not-quite-baseball games, I remembered two more:
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.
YouTube Viewing Guide
- The history of brawls in baseball video games – From the Atarihazure channel, a great video about fight scenes in baseball video games. There’s even one with a fighting minigame, like hockey games have! I never knew about a ton of these, and it’s amazing how many Japanese 8 and 16-bit games had them with hardly any since that era.
- Korean baseball game graphics evolution – The owner of this channel reached out to get permission to use some of my footage. The channel name translates to “A man who plays games without thinking.” This video opens my eyes to how many Korean baseball games I know nothing about!
- Champion Baseball (SG-1000) Gameplay – I was reading about the little-known-in-the-States first Sega home console the SG-1000 in the excellent SG-1000 Works by Jeremy Parish. So I had to play the one baseball game mentioned, recorded here on the Colecovision MiSTer FPGA core (long story, but that is rightly the way to play it). This game isn’t exactly a looker but I found it sort of fun to play. Definitely better than the Atari baseball games I’ve played before.