This is a site about Pro Yakyu (Japanese Baseball), not about who the next player to go over to MLB is. It's a community of Pro Yakyu fans who have come together to share their knowledge and opinions with the world. It's a place to follow teams and individuals playing baseball in Japan (and Asia), and to learn about Japanese (and Asian) culture through baseball.
It is my sincere hope that once you learn a bit about what we're about here that you will join the community of contributors.
Michael Westbay
(aka westbaystars)
Founder
Official US site is now up on the 2K Sports site. I think the graphics are going to turn a lot of knuckle-draggers off, but I've also seen a lot of displeasure at 2K7 and The Show, so Konami definitely has a chance to get a group of disenfranchised baseball fans. That's assuming that they improve the gameplay. I hold out a bit of hope, since the PawaMajor team is different from the Pawapuro team and have proven themselves to go in a slightly different direction, which can be only a good thing these days.
In an interesting move, it looks like the US version will release a bit earlier than the Japanese one. It'll also be interesting to see whether an edit mode is included in the US version. As long time gamers will know, Pawapuro is notorious for making you use Success Mode to create players. This would be a huge turn off for most American fans, but I'm leaning towards no edit mode. Lots of Japanese fans are talking about importing the American version if there is an edit mode. Pretty sad, Konami.
The stats look a little weird so far. Matsui has E contact and C power. A-Rod has an arch of 3 and A power. I'm really hoping for an edit mode, because Konami is going to royally mess up a lot of MLB players. Would it hurt them to hire someone who knows the majors just a bit? Someone who knows the majors just enough to know that Jim Thome doesn't hit only 10 homers in a full season? Game developers are suffering from a severe case of laziness these days. The only ones who show any effort are the ones who have huge multi-million dollar budgets. This is why I'm looking into buying a Sega Genesis or PC Engine. Even the new PS3 Winning Eleven looks exactly the same as everything released since WE7, just with HD graphics. I think the game industry may be due for a crash, with Nintendo being the exception.