I believe that for players born in the 80s and 90s, in arcades back then, although the game "Ninja Baseball" was not as popular as "Dinosaur Kombat", "Famous Generals", and "Three Kingdoms 2", the Q version The painting style and refreshing hitting feeling can still attract many players to it. In fact, everyone should be very familiar with the producer of this game. It is IREM, the producer of "Captain Hook" that allows us to play for one coin for a whole day. Moreover, there is an easter egg in the game, which is in the four colors of red, yellow, blue and green. The four letters I, R, E, and M can be found on the villain's hat.
In fact, the birth of this game was also due to the whimsy of one person. He was a little-known sales manager of the IREM US branch. In 1988, IREM, which was very popular in the gaming industry, took advantage of the situation and opened a branch in the United States. At that time, American players were immersed in the dual craze of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" and "Batman", so the sales manager proposed An idea was to combine the mysterious ninja from the East with America's most popular sport, baseball, to attract American players.
In this way, according to his idea, he found a painter to help him conceive the character image, and then submitted it to the Japanese headquarters. Unexpectedly, this fantastic idea was unanimously approved by the head office. , they just changed the original image that was closer to ninjas into the Q-print style that we are now familiar with. In this way, "Ninja Baseball" was born.
As a typical beat-'em-up game, "Ninja Baseball" naturally doesn't pay much attention to the plot, so the plot of the game is quite cliché : the statue of the golden man, the treasure of the Baseball Hall of Fame, was inexplicably stolen. He immediately found the protagonist and his party and asked them to help retrieve the golden man.
So the protagonist and his party went all the way and recovered bats, baseballs, gloves, hats, shoes, and the statuette himself in six cities in the United States. However, after the combination was completed, the statuette disappeared again! After the protagonist After investigation, it was finally discovered that all this was caused by the owner of the museum shouting to catch the thief and trying to embezzle the golden man. (The sense of déjà vu in Double Dragon 3) Therefore, the protagonists of justice naturally obliged to crush the curator’s conspiracy.
In fact, I wasn’t too keen on the Q version of the painting style at that time. It was only at the instigation of my friends that I invested my first game coin in this game. I didn’t expect that it would get out of hand from then on. The biggest surprise for me in the game "Ninja Baseball" is that the four ninja baseball players, red, yellow, blue and green, are good at different skills. It takes a long time to practice to be completely proficient in all four, so Back then, I was basically a green guy who could eat all over the place with one move.
I believe that for players who have been exposed to "Captain Hook" before, this game is quite easy to get started. Because many settings of this game are inherited from the previous "Captain Hook", such as exaggerated character expressions and enemies with very thick health bars. But the biggest innovation of "Ninja Baseball" lies in the change of gameplay.
In previous beat-em-up games, we only needed the A button to complete a set of combos, but in Ninja Baseball, we had to combine the jump button with the B button to complete a complete set of attacks. moves. With so many tricks, it will naturally attract curious players.
And after all, this game is designed to cater to American players, so most of the four characters in the game can find prototypes in reality.
The red character among them is the boss of the team. His prototype is actually Jose in the American Baseball League . This person’s experience can be considered very magical. Joes was a professional baseball player earlier and has won many honors, but After he retired, he went to boxing again. This story reminded me of Ferdinand, a football player. Their experiences were very similar. They retired and boxed. But the difference is that Ferdinand did okay, and this Jose , but lost to a 60-year-old man
The second green man is a character with two short bats in his hands. Although the green man's attack range is a bit short compared to the other three, his excellent footwork perfectly makes up for this shortcoming. Moreover, the Green Man's second move also has a very practical but extremely difficult move that kills without spending any blood. Its method of attack is: up and down in the air + B. You know, this move was broken by countless players back then. I couldn’t even try out the joystick!
The third yellow man is the only big character who carries a baseball with him. His prototype comes from a baseball player named Roger. He was the best pitcher voted by fans at the time, but this man had a difficult time in life. He is a live treasure who often throws baseballs into other people's faces when pitching, which has caused large-scale fights. Therefore, we see a character in the game who always throws baseballs into the faces of his enemies.
The fourth blue man is also the character with the largest attack range in the game. Not only is his body longer, but the bat he holds is much longer than others, and he can also use it like the green man. A stick split in two. What makes Blue Man the most addictive to players is his ability to bring explosive packs. In those days, basically all you needed to play Blue Man was back and front B, rush over and drop an explosive pack, and that was it. Not only did it cause high damage, but the posture was also great. Very handsome!
No matter how you look at it, the game "Ninja Baseball" should have been a phenomenal arcade game at the time , but what is shocking is that only a few thousand units of this game were sold after its birth, and the targeted Only a few dozen units have been sold in North America, but this game is a top-notch game that has been highly praised by the always harsh Japanese media. The sales volume is so dismal that IREM's marketing team has no choice but to leave it. blame.