Friday Starter is a weekly column of news and tidbits from the world of baseball video games—past and present, domestic and foreign.
Bristol Motor Speedway is in The Show
The Speedway Classic may have been a bit of a fiasco in real life, with record crowds forced to sit through rain as food ran out and the game could only be played for less than an inning. But you can experience it virtually to your heart’s content now in MLB The Show 25.
The Speedway Classic park is nestled into the infield at Bristol Motor Speedway, a NASCAR track in Tennessee. The Braves and Reds tried to play a game there on August 2nd, only for the game to be suspended due to weather then completed the next afternoon.
The racetrack bends around the outfield, making for a fun target for home run balls.
These parks have a bad habit of disappearing out of the next The Show game. Losing the Field of Dreams park from MLB The Show 21 and 22 was especially disappointing, presumably due to a legal rights issue with the real-life site. I imagine this park will also disappear in future rather than continue to license it, so enjoy while you can.
A cool Famista-kun plush on Mercari
A rare plushie of Famista-kun, the baseball player mascot for Namco’s Family Stadium series, appeared on Japanese Mercari recently. He’s a pretty detailed little guy, with the correct blue and white piping on the jersey and down the pant leg, an N logo on his hat, and even a Pac-Man logo on his shoulder.
If you’re interested, I’m sorry you had to hear it like this, but I have purchased the item already. Please understand.
The highly refined fake ads of Jikkyou Powerful Major League
I recently ripped some textures from the Japan-only predecessor to MLB Power Pros, called Jikkyou Powerful Major League. Clearly intellectual property law is different between Japan and the U.S.: Whereas Pawapuro games set in Japan have used real advertisements from the actual stadiums for over a decade, the Power Pros series by the same company resorted to fake advertisements.
I’m on record as being grumpy with MLB The Show‘s fake advertisements, which are mostly just ads for The Show‘s business partners, often stretched into some wrong aspect ratio. Why don’t they just have their art team design fake ads? Well, it might look a little silly if their results turned out like these, though I’d certainly enjoy it.
Aflostar feels like it must have been meant to say Afrostar, but maybe I’m crazy. G-Nuts looks like a credit card or a bank but it sounds like peanuts. 
Shushu Aqua Cider is perhaps the least American-looking ad imaginable. 
Simple. Powerful. Cat Food. With some impossible to read year written behind it. 
Lots that I wish I had in higher-res here. “Cool Down: Let,s relax a take it easy” (or maybe okay?) is really good. As is of course “Macaroni: United States Of America Since 19XX.” 
Lots of good ones here, but “Super Lady: Let,s go to the park” is my favorite. 
Aflostar is mysterious to me, as is the 1-liter bottle that says something like “True Crops”. é audio is also a personal favorite, with a strange blond mouse man wearing headphones. 
“The Dice Is Cast” is the one here that sticks in my head. Webster’s Dictionary now accepts “dice” to mean a singular die, but also that’s not the kind of die being referred to with Alea Iacta Est, so… 
The return of the mysterious 1-liter “Crops” bottle. And the simple but effective ad for something or other that just says “Sweet!” 
Ninja Soda is a funny mixture with the old-timey scoreboard ads here at Fenway. “Enjoy Game” is also some charmingly awkward English. 
It’s probably meant to be Orange-Red, but I always read the ad here as a verb: Orangered. To oranger oneself. 
Pilot Chute and Factory Manager are both completely inscrutable, and therefore fun. 
Ton of ads stuck together here, but two stick out to me most: Radio Fungo, a great name for a baseball-related radio station. And Bank of Ram, which sounds chaotic. 
More baseball references here with BigSwing Cafe, though I wonder if that cafe might not attract the wrong crowd with a name like that. 
Is this one a baseball reference too? In English, you aren’t getting points when you play baseball, but in Japanese, there’s not really a difference between runs and points. 
An odd self-insert ad for Powerful Pro Baseball Game appears in this bunch, under what I can now only read as “Power For Real.” I also love to purchase pro skating board goods.
Song of the Week
“Super Suketto Man” by the Lee Brothers. This blog covered the other song, “Baseball Boogie,” from this Lee Brothers single last week, and it’s time to cover the B side.
Suketto (助っ人) means “helper,” and it’s a term used for foreign players in Japanese professional baseball. Leron and Leon Lee are two of the most successful sukettos in NPB history.
Last week’s song was an Otis Redding/Blues Brothers rip-off. This week the song is clearly mimicking another popular Blues Brothers cover, “Soul Man,” first popularized by Sam & Dave.
The singing performance is a little half-hearted, covered up a bit by a goofy echo-y vocal effect. The chatter surrounding the verses is a little charming, with the Lee Brothers talking about star pitchers and calling out lots of mostly Japan-specific baseball terms like shuuto and backscreen.