’98 甲​子​園

Publisher: Magical Company

Developer: Probably also Magical Company

Date Played: I don’t remember

Region:  Japan

Time played: I lasted just one actual game, but there was a fair degree of team customization and practice drills before getting to play it.

What’d you think?: This is where it all began. The first game I tried to play, chosen because, as it was the only game beginning with punctuation, it came first alphabetically. As a baseball game, for its era, it seemed pretty decent, but I don’t care much for baseball and the only baseball game I’ve sunk much time into is 2020 Super Baseball. The idea of a video game based around high school baseball was pretty silly to this American, but Japan seems into it. There was a surprising degree of customization you could put into your team. It allowed you to have a “school song”, and you could change the pitch of this song syllable by syllable. Pretty cool stuff.

YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv6cTaWcXKk