Moero!! Pro Yakyuu
From 30-30.club - Baseball Video Game Encyclopedia
Moero!! Pro Yakyuu
| JP Title | 燃えろ!!プロ野球 transl. “Burn!! Pro Baseball” |
|---|---|
| Release Date | Japan: June 26 1987 |
| Platforms | Famicom |
| Developer | TOSE |
| Publisher | Jaleco |
| Original Price | 5500 yen |
| Team Names | Team initials only of NPB teams |
| Player Names | Varies by revision |
The original Japanese title that would later come to North America under the name Bases Loaded. Moero!! Pro Yakyuu sold more than a million and a half copies despite a well-earned reputation for glitches.
Description
Moero!! Pro Yakyuu released six months after Namco’s popular Famicom baseball game, Pro Yakyuu Family Stadium. Compared to Namco’s game, MoePro stands out for its TV-style behind-the-pitcher camera angle, more realistic player proportions, and voice synthesis audio powered by a special chip included in the game cartridge. These qualities and the ongoing popularity of Famicom games and baseball games led to tremendous sales, over 1.5 million copies.
However, the game quickly earned a reputation for poor programming quality, with frequent, regular glitches. Early copies of the game included sheets of paper explaining the game’s glitches. The most frequently experienced glitch is likely that each pitch following a foul ball will be ruled a called strike regardless of the pitch location.
The most infamous glitch is the bunt home run. Players designated as “sluggers,” generally the cleanup hitter for most teams, have special mechanics. These include stronger contact quality. Due to an oversight, bunts are also included in this mechanic, so sluggers can hit line drive doubles or even home runs on bunts.
Later revisions of the software were released which fixed or worked around each glitch.
Roster
Early revisions of the game feature real player names, sometimes abbreviated to fit the four-character name length maximum. Later revisions changed to false player names in response to complaints from professional teams about the unauthorized use of real rosters. Bob Horner, who had just joined the Yakult Swallows in April before the game’s release, is featured and is the game’s most dominant hitter.
The twelve teams of NPB are featured with only an initial, with no full names or logos. In two-player, a 13th team of historic Japanese all-stars called “St” is available.
Commercial
Instruction Manual
Physical Media
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Front box art for Moero!! Pro Yakyuu. Scanned by Gaming Alexandria.
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Back box art for Moero!! Pro Yakyuu. Scanned by Gaming Alexandria.
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Cartridge front scan for Moero!! Pro Yakyuu. Scanned by Gaming Alexandria.
How to Play Today
Original Hardware: Moero!! Pro Yakyuu is infamous in Japan for being extremely common and undesirable. The game is playable on a Famicom, or a retro emulation system like the RetroN, or on an American NES using a 72-pin adapter. Umpire and crowd sounds using the voice module chip in the cartridge do not work when the cartridge is played on NES with a 72-pin adapter.
Ports: Official ports of Moero!! Pro Yakyuu were released in Japan for Wii, Wii U, 3DS, PS4, and various smartphones.
Software Emulation: Moero!! Pro Yakyuu‘s special audio chip is not correctly utilized by any current Nintendo Famicom/NES emulator (to my knowledge. Email me if you know otherwise.) The game will play accurately but without the umpire or crowd audio.
Hardware Emulation: The same as software emulation, currently FPGA cores like on the MiSTer do not play audio samples that would have used the game’s special audio chip.
