0 to Z of Playstation 1 Games - Baseball Navigator

Baseball Navigator is a sports management and business simulation game, unlike most baseball games that appear on console this title puts you in charge of the team rather than actually playing baseball. 

Developed by Ornith and initially published by Angel before being replaced by MegaHouse Corporation for its rerelease. The game initially released on the 31^st of July 1997, the game however received a rerelease later that same year on the 14^th of October 1997 the game released exclusively in Japan for both releases of the game.

Baseball is one of the most popular sports in Japan, and dates back to 1872 when Horace Wilson introduced the sport at the Kaisai School in Tokyo, since then the sport has taken off In Japan with their own professional baseball association similar to the Major League Baseball in the States called the Nippon Professional Baseball.

Like the US Baseball league the Japanese league is divided up into two divisions The Central and Pacific Leagues, unsurprisingly the Japanese league is much smaller than the US version with just 12 teams competing divided into two 6 team divisions.

While the rules are pretty much the same as the US league there are also several other differences over the US version, unlike the Major League games can finish in a tie, with games unable to go beyond a 12^th inning with the exception of playoffs, there are also a few technical differences, with the ball being smaller and harder than the US variant, strike zones are smaller with a narrower inside strike zone than the outer strike zone.

So is the field, with five of the Nippon league teams having undersized home fields, the other major difference from the US Major League is the limit on foreign players, with a maximum of 4 allowed, this has helped the league keep costs down.

Enough about the sport and to the actual game, Baseball Navigator is not a sports game where you control your players, instead the game focuses on the management side of the sport. The game is split into three modes the first is Scenario mode, this is the main game where the player takes control of a team and tries to coach them to NPB success.

This is done by setting training schedules for your players, drafting and trading players to strengthen your squad, meet with your baseball clubs owners, and during matches issue commands to your players. Build up your team and even challenge a friend with your ultimate NPB team.

Which brings us on to the second mode Data Battle, this uses your team that you have built up in the scenario mode and allows you to pit it against either an AI controlled team or against another human player controlled team. The final mode is a simple vs mode where the player can take control of any team and face off against either and AI or other human player.

This being a Japanese only release critic reviews for the game are none existent, normally we would now go over to GameFAQs for their user ratings at this point but even these are very limited. With not a single person at the time of writing this giving the game a rating.

One user rated the games difficulty, rating the game as having just the right difficulty level. There is also 1 user that rated the games lifespan, with that user rating the game at a 40 hour lifespan.

This is the part of 0 to Z where is visit four online retailers and see what the availability of the title is, and what price you would be looking at if you wanted to pick this title up, the sites that I will be using for this are Amazon.com, eStarland.com, retrogames.co.uk and Gamedude.com I know the last one is very location specific, but from a podcast I listen to, I’ve heard they have a huge stock of older games, Ebay has now been dropped unless the game is unavailable at other retailers.

So lets get down to business with Gamedude who unsurprisingly don’t stock this Japanese only release, the same goes for Retrogames.co.uk and eStarland.com. So we head over to Amazon.com in hopes of finding at least one copy of the game, we in fact find a decent number of copies available on Amazon.com.

 

With a good quality and complete used copy the first listed this copy ships from Japan and comes with free shipping as well, and can be picked up for $7.95, a second copy priced at the same but in very good condition also comes with free shipping and is complete.

Largely used copies of the game peak around the $12 mark with a few priced higher than this, with these copies coming in between the $16 to $19 mark. These copies peak pretty much at the point where new copies of the game start with the cheapest new copy currently on the market is priced at $19.32 this also comes with free shipping.

As is the case with most of the new copies currently on the market, a few more copies are priced around the $19 to $20 mark, from this point the price for a new copy slowly rises with a new copy peaking at around the $29 mark, a steady price climb rather than the usual big jumps in prices that have been quite common on previously covered game.

Written by

P J Gibbon