Chōkūkan Night: Pro Yakyū King

The Good
Good idea for control scheme

The Bad
CPU players cheat all the time

The Bottom Line
Hey batter batter…or something. Baseball is a sport I know very little about, although the basic rules seem pretty simple to figure out, and quite similar to a sport I’ve played in school called Rounders. Hit the ball, run around the bases. If the ball ends up at a base before you do, you’re out. The N64’s first baseball game (of many) also happens to be a Japanese-only game.

The basic controls are simple to figure out, but difficult to master. The batter controls a cursor on the screen and swings to hit the ball. Your aim has to be extremely precise, though, and it’s extremely difficult. I only managed to hit it a few times. Pitching is very simple, though: move the stick to control a invisible cursor, if you’re too far off course, the pitcher will shake his head.

Fielding I found to be quite slow, while the CPU was spot-on (they caught everything I hit). Once you figure out selecting players, it isn’t too bad, but I still had the issue with the CPU being absolutely perfect.

King of Pro Baseball doesn’t have a lot of modes, but it does have an immense amount of options, which weren’t something I could really play around with due to having to use Google Translate and then not understanding Baseball terminology. I did get the impression that this was a decent baseball game and the basic pitching/batting were intuitive.