Friday Starter is a weekly column of news and tidbits from the world of baseball video games—past and present, domestic and foreign.
Buyer, meet Buyee
For this site and my YouTube channel, I buy a lot of imported Japanese baseball video games. I’ve gotten these from several different places over the years, but recently the importer site Buyee has been my main source. For my use case of nabbing a couple dozen cheapo baseball games (that don’t weigh a lot) and tossing them into one box, the total cost is very reasonable.
I’m almost always searching for games, but some other interesting stuff floats by in my search terms. In the slideshow below, I show off some baseball video game merch I’ve run into lately on Buyee, to give a sense of what-all’s out there.
First off is an excellent T-shirt collab between the Seibu Lions and Moero!! Pro Yakyuu, the original Japanese release of Bases Loaded. The front of the shirt depicts the famous “bunt home run” glitch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qUImAPgOis 
Would you prefer Bases Loaded boxer briefs? Yes, they exist, and pajama pants too if you want. 
Another look at those Bases Loaded undies. 
More of a Famista / R.B.I. Baseball fan? They have boxers for that series too on Buyee, of course. 
Famista is very popular with streetwear and sportswear brand collabs. This hoodie is a collab with Zett, the baseball glove company. 
Then this hoodie stylishly combines the Family Stadium logo with the baseball-inspired streetwear brand Keboz. 
Hardcore Chocolate is a T-shirt brand that specializes in collabs with comedians, wrestlers, and of course, 8-bit baseball games. 
Once upon a time, you could even buy the Namco Stars hat, right off of Famista-kun’s head. 
The Power Pros / Pawapuro series has had its fair share of c ollabs too. I’m a fan of this slightly edgy look. 
That baseball-inspired streetwear brand Keboz has done a lot of Pawapuro merch, like this ’90s-style sweatshirt. 
I also like this Keboz Pawapuro sweatshirt, if you’d prefer one without a cartoon baseball player on it. 
The back, with a baseball jersey-style name and number. The number is 826, which in the complicated world of Japanese number wordplay works to spell both “Pawapuro” and “Pawafuru.” 
New Era has a series of Pawapuro caps like this one. 
This is actually a poncho for Harikiri Stadium, the 8- and 16-bit baseball game series from Taito. 
Pro Yakyuu Spirits merch tends to rely on Choushi-kun, this face that represents the condition of players in the game’s menus. I’m not a huge fan, but this shirt is pretty good. 
And I would absolutely get this Yu Darvish – Prospi collab hat, starring a Choush-kunified version of Yu Darvish. 
Including this one because it’s mysterious to me. What would Konami Super Baseball be exactly? Did Konami sponsor the TV series Super Baseball and make a jacket? Or is this an early title and logo for some other video game? I cannot tell. 
The jacket is signed by former NPB player Norihiro Nakamura, if that helps clue anybody in to what it might be. If you know, email me at nate@30-30.club!
A heartwarming MLB The Show glitch story
In last year’s MLB The Show, a glitch allowed online co-op players to use any card in the game. Best of all, this includes a kind of card previously reserved only for actual MLB players: Real 99s. This card has existed for several years in the online card-collecting Diamond Dynasty mode. MLB players can get a Real 99 card of themselves, with extremely strong attributes. So this meant if you were playing against someone with a Real 99 card, that meant you were playing against that actual MLB athlete.
With this glitch, anyone could get access to a Real 99 and use it to dominate online (or more likely, to play even-ish matches against other co-op players also using the same glitch).
In The Washington Post this week (paywalled), this glitch turned three 18-year-olds into superfans of journeyman reliever Derek Law, after they used his Real 99 card online. Suited up in three separate eras of Derek Law jerseys (Reds, Giants, and Nationals), they attended Nationals-Reds games to catch a glimpse of their (currently injured) unusual choice of hero.
After not catching Law with seats bought near the bullpen during the first game they attended on May 3rd this year, one of the superfans reached Law in a social media DM. Law spotted them tickets for the next day’s game, where he did a meet and greet and signed their jerseys. If there is any touch of irony in the fans’ interest in Law, it does not come through in their quotes in the Washington Post story. They just sound jittery with excitement at meeting Derek Law, and completing a connection built by a video game bug.
RIP Tribe Nine
A brief eulogy for Tribe Nine, which is being killed off this November after only releasing this February. I talked about the game in my list of “not-quite-baseball games” late last year on this blog. For a big multimedia project featuring the artist behind Danganronpa, it’s a stunningly short life.
The game is an action RPG for PC and mobile set in a sci-fi dystopian baseball league. While I decided the game isn’t quite baseball-y enough to cover on this site, I plan to give it a couple hours soon before it’s laid to rest.
Song of the Week
“The Way I Swing” by Kid Sensation feat. Ken Griffey Jr (2009). The original 1992 release is a bit better known, where Griffey contributes more than one plausible rap verses. But the beat… It’s two repeating tones of a theremin-like spooky sound, with a guitar riff that can’t exist in the same key. Radical and ’90s I guess, but I can’t make it through all four minutes.
When Griffey signed back with the Mariners at the end of his career, Kid Sensation released “Back Home,” featuring a new version of “The Way I Swing.” This new version adds a much-needed bass lick and harder-hitting percussion. It sounds like someone with almost 20 more years of music production experience, for sure.