RBI Baseball's Forgotten Sequel

Looking briefly at Pro Yakyuu Family Stadium '87

RBI Baseball’s Forgotten Sequel

It’s taken me a little while, but I was eventually able to beat Pro Yakyuu Family Stadium ‘87 (プロ野球ファミリースタジアム’87).

In fact, if you’ve never seen or played the game before, you can check out my review of my own project here:

Famista 87 has its ups and downs. I feel like there are more bugs in this version of the game than in the original game, and it’s absolutely the case that offense in this version is stripped down compared to the original.

Of course, if you read what most people say about this game online, you’ll probably believe that it’s just a roster update for the original Famista.

And it’s true to an extent. The graphics are almost exactly the same, and the gameplay is very similar. Even the box art looks the same. The only “improvement” they made to the packaging of the cartridge itself was to slap on a sticker that said “87,” as described on the Japanese Wikipedia page for the game.

There are two additional teams, of course. The most famous of the added teams was team M, which was a team filled with major league stars. If you want, you can have Nolan Ryan throw fastballs at 168 kilometers per hour (about 104 miles an hour) as described here:

From Biweekly Famitsu, November 13, 1987, page 31

As I described in the video, the folks over at Biweekly Famitsu did quite a bit of research in late 1987 and early 1988 into the new version of the game. Though their sample size was a bit lower than we like, they did discover that the offense was clearly nerfed:

From Biweekly Famitsu, January 8, 1988, page 40

In the original Famista on the left, they counted 3,202 hits in 15,558 at bats, for a woeful .206 batting average (I’m guessing these were player versus player games). Meanwhile, after a few weeks of Famista ‘87, they had only 850 hits in 4,584 at bats, for a horrendous .185 batting average.

Of course, team G (representing the Tokyo Giants) had the best batting average of all:

From Biweekly Famitsu, January 8, 1988, page 41

Note that the team R in the original game was now split up between teams B and R.

Similarly, Famista ‘87 has a huge home run drought. According to the magazine’s records, home runs per game dropped from about 2 down to 1.4:

From Biweekly Famitsu, January 8, 1988, page 41

All of this is to say that the two games actually are not identical, despite what the vast majority of retro video game reviewers will tell you.

Famista ‘87 is harder until you get to the final game. Team M is actually easy, since the pitchers tend to throw fastballs right down the heart of the plate.

And, as cruel as this might seem, the Biweekly Famitsu reviewers really took Famista ‘87 to task for the change. Check out the review scores:

From Biweekly Famitsu, February 5, 1988, page 14

7s and 8s might not seem awful, but compare that to the original:

From Biweekly Famitsu, December 12, 1986, page 9

I’m not going to translate all of this for you now (though let me know if you’d be interested in that; it might be a good future post). However, I can summarize and tell you that the reviewers were concerned that the new version of the game just felt different.

And, having spent hours playing and beating it, I can assure you that Famista ‘87 is different from the original. It’s quite a bit more frustrating, especially since the computer’s curveballs have this tendency to disappear right as you swing.

Is that a good thing or a bad thing? The best way to find out is to play it for yourself.