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Japanese Koshien Tournament - In english
...Well, Engrish anyway...
I have been searching for YEARS to find a baseball game that has 2 things.
a.) follows the career of a high school baseball team in Japan from prefectures all theway through the koushien tournament.
b.) is in readable english.
The game I found, through random stumbling is called "League Series Baseball 2", for the PS2. A very obscure game.
Some important notes:
There is no League Series Baseball (LSB) one. They just skipped right to 2, because why not?
The game is really just a port of an old popular Japanese baseball series, I believe the original game was released in Japan in 2001, but the translated English version was released circa 2004.
The English version was not released in North America (Where I live), luckily, I was able to emulate it on my PC with the physical copy of the disc. Otherwise, you will need a PAL ps2 to play the game.
Overall, the game is pretty fun, about what you would expect from a game created in 2001, probably one of the first games for the PS2.
Teams/ Dynasty mode
There are approximately 4200 teams in the game. Yes, 4200.
The season is really broken up into 3 major tournaments, Fall, Spring, and the 'major' summer tournament. There is no regular season like you see in American sports. Every team is put into a 'prefectural' tournament, where they play the other LOCAL teams. If you survive the prefectural tournament, you then enter the national tournament with the dreams of winning the national High School Baseball Championship.
Since the ENTIRE SEASON is essentially just one big tournament, if you lose one game, you are done for that seasons tournament.
If you win the national tournaments, you will have a chance of securing a very skilled player who will come in as a first year student when the year (3 tournaments) are complete. The skilled player have 1 of 3 builds- VERY fast, VERY strong, or well above average in all skill areas.
Some prefectures are larger with schools spread out over a large area, while others are essentially all schools from one major city. You have the ability to see where each school is located on a map of japan if you browse through the schools in the 'play now' screen.
In Japan, high school athletes have 3 years of eligibility, so when a player joins your team, you have 3 years to hone their skills. Between tournaments, you have the ability to complete 2 drills. The first is a hitting drill where you can improve batting power. the second is a defensive drill where you act as the coach and hit the ball to any base, the player who fields the ball will receive a small defensive boost. This is really as far as player development goes, sadly, but it gets the job done.
GAMEPLAY
This game plays VERY VERY SLOWLY!!!!!
If you play it, I reccomend playing on an emulator and letting the game play at a speed of around 133 - 150% of its regular speed. Otherwise, I think the game is obsurdly slow.
There is a girl who tells you basic info about the next team you will face. she is pretty much the 'team manager', as they would say in Japan. Her English dialog is... OK... not perfect.
There are 3 batting styles, contact, power, and dynamic. Each hitting style has a unique batting stance and swing type, so you really need to learn your players.
Again, this game is nearly 20 years old (just dawned on me as I was writing this, WOW), so the graphics are not stellar, but reasonable for the time.
There is also dynamic weather and lighting, so a day game will turn to night and you can see the lights come on, or you can play through a passing rain storm. Pretty cool.
If you are interested in Japanese HS baseball, I would say pick it up! its pretty cheap and worth a try.
Anyway, do you know of any other games like this? I really like the japanese HS baseball scene, but it's pretty slim pickings when I dont speak any japanese...
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06-29-2019, 11:24 PM
