The Game Boys of summer
No, don't worry, no Don Henley here. Just a video about a portable baseball title for this week's Game Boy Works:
This is yet another one of those "little chubby dudes take the field" baseball titles. In fact, this is the "little chubby dudes take the field" title: Famista, as in Family Stadium, also known as R.B.I. Baseball. While pretty heavily based on the design of Nintendo's NES Baseball, the Famista series quickly eclipsed its source material in terms of both sequels and endurance. All those sequels rarely made their way west, though; for example, this was the first of three (I think) Famista games for Game Boy, but it was the only one to reach the U.S. As it turns out, Americans don't seem to gravitate to short, waddling blobs when it comes to sports games.
Something I didn't mention in the episode is that this release was published in the U.S. by Bandai, who would of course eventually merge with developer Namco. By no means was this unusual, though. In the early days of the Game Boy, Namco and Nintendo were still somewhat on the outs after their conflict over Famicom licensing, and Namco didn't have much of a home publishing presence in the U.S. Tengen picked up a lot of Namco NES releases to publish unofficially in the States, thanks to the two companies' mutual connection to Atari, but Bandai snagged quite a few for official licensed production as well. However, this is the first time we've seen the Namco/Bandai partnership in action on Game Boy. And the last, so far as I can find! So please enjoy this tiny taste of our corporate future in the form of a so-so baseball game.
Episode description: The Game Boy gets its third baseball title, unsurprisingly making the so-called "thinking man's sport" also the most prolific "gaming boy's sport" as well. You may know this franchise better as R.B.I. Baseball, but since that particular bit of branding had become associated with unlicensed provocateurs attempting to undermine Nintendo's lock on the U.S. market, publisher Bandai unsurprisingly went with a different title.
