''Super Batter Up'', known in Japan as is a baseball video game with both a one- and two-player mode plus a

league League or The League may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Leagues'' (band), an American rock band * ''The League'', an American sitcom broadcast on FX and FXX about fantasy football Sports * Sports league * Rugby league, full contact footba ...

mode. The North American release has an official license from the

Major League Baseball Players Association The Major League Baseball Players Association (or MLBPA) is the union representing all current Major League Baseball players. All players, managers, coaches, and athletic trainers who hold or have held a signed contract with a Major League club ...

and features the names of actual professional baseball players. However, it does not have a license from

Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

, so no actual team names are used; the teams are only identified by their respective locales. While the all-star mode in the Japanese version of the game closely mimics the

Nippon Professional Baseball All-Star Series The Nippon Professional Baseball All-Star Game is an annual baseball series of All-Star Games (in most years, two games are played, but three such games can and have been played as well) between players from the Central League and the Pacific Leag ...

, the North American version of the game emulates the

MLB All-Star Game The Major League Baseball All-Star Game, also known as the "Midsummer Classic", is an annual professional baseball game sanctioned by Major League Baseball (MLB) and contested between the all-stars from the American League (AL) and National ...

. An intrasquad mode (found only in the Japanese version) allows players on the same team to face off against each other. The only limitations are that there are only five pitchers on each team, players cannot be changed, and uniforms are limited to red and white colors.

Gameplay

The game features teams representing the 26

teams and their players from the

1991 Major League Baseball season The 1991 Major League Baseball season saw the Minnesota Twins defeat the Atlanta Braves for the World Series title, in a series where every game was won by the home team. Awards and honors * Baseball Hall of Fame **Rod Carew **Ferguson Jenkins ...

. Ballplayers who competed during that baseball season like

Cal Ripken Calvin Edwin Ripken Jr. (born August 24, 1960), nicknamed " The Iron Man", is an American former baseball shortstop and third baseman who played 21 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) for the Baltimore Orioles (1981–2001). One of his posit ...

Dave Winfield David Mark Winfield (born October 3, 1951) is an American former Major League Baseball (MLB) right fielder. He is the special assistant to the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association. Over his 22-year career, he playe ...

, and

Kirby Puckett Kirby Puckett (March 14, 1960 – March 6, 2006) was an American professional baseball player. He played his entire 12-year Major League Baseball (MLB) career as a center fielder for the Minnesota Twins (1984–1995). Puckett is the Twins' all- ...

are included. However, the Japanese version was released featuring teams and actual player names from the

Nippon Professional Baseball or NPB is the highest level of baseball in Japan. Locally, it is often called , meaning ''Professional Baseball''. Outside Japan, it is often just referred to as "Japanese baseball". The roots of the league can be traced back to the formation ...

league. Players get to play in either a

dome A dome () is an architectural element similar to the hollow upper half of a sphere. There is significant overlap with the term cupola, which may also refer to a dome or a structure on top of a dome. The precise definition of a dome has been a m ...

resembling the

Tokyo Dome is an indoor stadium in Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan. It was designed as a baseball stadium following its predecessor, Korakuen Stadium. Construction on the stadium began on May 16, 1985, and it opened on March 17, 1988. It was built on the site of th ...

in Japan or

Rogers Centre Rogers Centre (originally SkyDome) is a multi-purpose retractable roof stadium in Downtown Toronto, Ontario, Canada, situated at the base of the CN Tower near the northern shore of Lake Ontario. Opened in 1989 on the former Railway Lands, it ...

(then called SkyDome) in Toronto, a contemporary baseball stadium (with homages to Japan's

Koshien Stadium , commonly referred to as simply Koshien Stadium, is a baseball park located near Kobe, Hyōgo, Kobe in Nishinomiya, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan. The stadium was built to host the High school baseball in Japan, national high school baseball tourn ...

or Chicago's

Wrigley Field Wrigley Field is a Major League Baseball (MLB) stadium on the North Side of Chicago, Illinois. It is the home of the Chicago Cubs, one of the city's two MLB franchises. It first opened in 1914 as Weeghman Park for Charles Weeghman's Chicago Wh ...

), or in traditional-style

stadium A stadium ( : stadiums or stadia) is a place or venue for (mostly) outdoor sports, concerts, or other events and consists of a field or stage either partly or completely surrounded by a tiered structure designed to allow spectators to stand o ...

style (reminiscent of

Chiba Marine Stadium (official name: ) is a stadium in Chiba City, Chiba, Japan. It opened in 1990 and holds approximately 30,000 people. It is primarily used for baseball and is the home field of the Chiba Lotte Marines. It is also used for Rugby union. The stadium ...

in Japan or

Busch Memorial Stadium Busch Memorial Stadium, also known as Busch Stadium II, was a multi-purpose sports facility in St. Louis, Missouri, that operated for 40 years, from 1966 through 2005. The stadium served as the home of the St. Louis Cardinals National League b ...

in St. Louis). Each player in the Japanese version of the game has a popularity meter that gauges how liked they are by the audience; better players are more likely to be cheered on for an excellent play. Players are shown standing up for the

national anthem A national anthem is a patriotic musical composition symbolizing and evoking eulogies of the history and traditions of a country or nation. The majority of national anthems are marches or hymns in style. American, Central Asian, and European n ...

of both the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

and

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

(when the home team is

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

). They can also choose to substitute a

hitter In baseball, batting is the act of facing the opposing pitcher and trying to produce offense for one's team. A batter or hitter is a person whose turn it is to face the pitcher. The three main goals of batters are to become a baserunner, to driv ...

or a

runner Running is a method of terrestrial locomotion allowing humans and other animals to move rapidly on foot. Running is a type of gait characterized by an aerial phase in which all feet are above the ground (though there are exceptions). This is ...

while at bat. All game stats are shown on the fictitious

newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports a ...

, known as the ''Namco Sports'' paper. Players are permitted to zoom in and out of the paper to look for minor details. The words " game over" appear on the screen regardless of whether the player wins or loses a game. Passwords can be entered to restore progress in the game. Both one-player and two-player modes integrates the traditional playing mode of the game. If the player wins the single-player tournament, then he can see the ending. The battle mode becomes a single-game mode when two players are playing. While the Japanese version of this game uses

super deformed Chibi, also known as super deformation, or S.D. is a style of caricature originating in Japan, and common in anime and manga where characters are drawn in an exaggerated way, typically small and chubby with stubby limbs, oversized heads, and m ...

graphics for the ballplayers, the North American version uses 2D rendering software to create more realistic graphics. The single-player league play mode keep tracks of all the players statistics during the season. Pitchers are considered to be "cold" when their

ERA An era is a span of time defined for the purposes of chronology or historiography, as in the regnal eras in the history of a given monarchy, a calendar era used for a given calendar, or the geological eras defined for the history of Earth. Comp ...

is above 9.90. An "average" hitter for season mode would theoretically have a batting average of .300 and 30 home runs while the "average" pitcher would have an ERA of 3.00 along with a fastball of .

Stadium dimensions

* Dome: Artificial turf with distances down each foul line and in center field. * Modern/contemporary stadium: Artificial turf with distances down the coal up lines and in center field. * Traditional stadium: Natural grass with distances in each corner and to center field.

Reception

In Japan, it topped the ''

Famitsu formerly ''Famicom Tsūshin'', is a line of Japanese video game magazines published by Kadokawa Game Linkage (previously known as Gzbrain), a subsidiary of Kadokawa. ''Famitsu'' is published in both weekly and monthly formats as well as in the fo ...

'' sales charts from April 1992 to May 1992.

Allgame RhythmOne , previously known as Blinkx, and also known as RhythmOne Group, is an American digital advertising technology company that owns and operates the web properties AllMusic, AllMovie, and SideReel. Blinkx was founded in 2004, went publ ...

editor Brett Alan Weiss described ''Super Batter Up'' as "an average baseball game", although he praised the game's "solid controls".

Notes

References

Bibliography