Official MLB Power Pros thread!

[XiaNaphryz]

With the impending arrival of the first Pawapuro baseball game to hit US shores, I present...





I will update the OP as more info becomes available or if corrections are needed. Note that due to the severe lack of info available at this time much of my gameplay info is based off personal experience with the previous Pawapuro MLB game, as well as info found over at the Japanese Baseball video game forums - major thanks to BigManZam, Shinigami, and jomcclane over there for much of the translated info from the first Pawapuro MLB game! Game screenshots are courtesy of Gaming-Age.

General Information
Title: MLB Power Pros, 実況パワフルメジャーリーグ 2 (Jikkyou Pawafuru Major League 2)
Published: 2K Sports
Developer: Pawapuro Productions (Konami)
Genre: Sports
Number of Players: 1-2
Release Date October 1, 2007 (US), October 4, 2007 (Japan)
MSRP: $29.99 PS2, $39.99 Wii (US), 6,980円 PS2/Wii (Japan)
Console: Playstation 2, Nintendo Wii
Official site: 2K Sports (US), Konami (Japan)

Japan's number one baseball series finally hits US shores this Fall thanks to Konami's partnership with 2K Sports! This is actually the second MLB licensed game Konami worked on, and counting the original J-League games the Pawapuro franchise has been around since the SNES days. The franchise is well-known for its deep realistic gameplay, unique game modes, and cutesy chibi player models.

Take-Two's MLB license didn't cover the Japanese territory, hence Konami's ability to make a MLB game. All MLB teams, stadiums, and players (that are in the union of course) are covered. There doesn't appear to be any major differences between the US and Japanese version, except the visual look of the models (US image first, Japan image second):





Though the Japanese shot above is from the first MLB game released in Japan a year ago, I believe the Japanese version will keep the original look as supposedly the rabid Pawapuro fanbase hates the look given to the US version. Some long-time import fans may dislike the new look as well.

Game Features

Sim Gameplay
Bu, bu, but teh grafx are for kiddies, it cant be sim!1!! For new players willing to look past the graphics, you'll find the game plays pretty good!



Batting uses a cursor-based system which is freely controlled by the player. In normal mode, the batting cursor outline will change shape depending on the current situation and the batter's abilities and stats. The bigger or smaller the cursor, the easier or harder it will be to make contact for a hit. You can also switch to power swing mode, which reduce the cursor to a small circle representing the bat's sweet spot. While it's possible to get power hits in normal batting mode, it's easier to get them with the power swing cursor, though it will be harder to aim in general with the smaller cursor. Swing timing and bat position is everything in this game so if you expect something to happen it likely will - late swings on high pitches will likely be fouled back, etc.

Pitching is also simple, choose a pitch by holding a direction and pressing a button to initiate the wind-up. You then aim where you want to throw the pitch by moving the catcher's mitt, the location of which will become locked once the pitcher reaches a certain point in his wind-up. How accurate the pitch ends up depends on a number of factors, primarily the pitcher's personal stats, attributes, and his current stamina. Before the pitch, you can also adjust your defensive formations quickly and on-the-fly with separate settings for infield and outfield. There's the usual options available for showing/hiding various things like strike zone, pitch aim location (catcher' mitt), etc.

You can choose between Digital and Analog control for controlling the batting/pitching cursor, along with an option for "Lock-on" for batting which is a bit of an assist option - it will start to move the batting cursor towards the ball location, but you can't just sit there and just swing at the ball because the cursor will always get there too late by itself. You still need to move the cursor in time to hit the ball. Note that certain combinations may make hitting too easy or too frustratingly hard, so you may need to play a few games with different settings to find your personal preference.



Fielding is again simple (see a pattern?), you simply move the selected fielder and throw the ball to a target. You can use the now-standard control scheme of "one button mapped to each base" or the old-school control scheme where you hold a direction and press one button.

There's also options to semi-automate fielding and baserunning: for fielding the CPU will field the ball for you but you have to decide where to throw it, and for baserunning the CPU will initiate actions but you still have full control over all base runners. You can also set management decisions to automatic also if you don't want to worry about defensive shifts, changing pitchers, etc.

You'll also find all the usual things found in western baseball games from injuries caused by diving head-first into a barrier to home-run-robbing catches at the wall. You'll also find a ton of other things not usually seen, including:

- Dynamic Player Condition System:
If you're familiar with Winning Eleven's arrow system, you'll recognize this system.



Each player in a game will have a face icon in various states - the happier the face, the better performance you can expect from the player. So your ace pitcher will throw his pitches faster, have sharper movement on his pitches, and be more accurate. Likewise, if he's in a crappy state you can expect the opposite, in which case you'll have to actually pitch your way out of certain situations where you might have been able to get out of them with sheer power if he was in better condition.

It's also possible for these conditions to change during a game itself, so a player who gets a few extra base hits in a row may see his condition improve whereas a pitcher getting rocked in an inning may see their condition worsen.

- Player-controlled pitcher warm-ups:
This might seem like a small feature, but it's actually quite effective. When a new pitcher enters the game, you can throw a couple of warm-up pitches on the mound before play resumes. This allows you to get a feel for how well certain pitches are breaking, and how fast and accurate the pitcher is throwing on that particular day.

- Tons of Player Attributes:
You have your basic set of attributes that players have, such as Contact, Power, and Trajectory (whether a batter is likely to hit more ground balls or fly balls) for fielders, and Stamina and Accuracy for pitchers. But you also have these...



These may remind some people of APF2K8's attribute system, except some of Pawapuro's attribs have differing levels. Every player in the game has these in various combinations. All the attributes I list here are from last year's game (many of these will like have different names in the US release, the Pitching ones listed in the screenshot above are the only ones I'm completely sure of obviously). I'm sure there are more attributes than what I list below, these are just the ones I found translations for.

Consistent success in Pawapuro games relies on knowing a player's individual attributes!

These attributes are rated from 1-5, 1 being low, 3 being average, 5 being the best.

* w/RISP – How well player hit with runners in scoring position.
* Against LH Pitching – Self-explanatory, how well you hit left-handed pitchers.
* Sub-Position – How well you field your other/secondary positions, if you have any.
* Injury – How injury prone the player is.
* Base Stealing – How well player steals bases.
* Base Running – How well player runs the bases.
* Throwing Accuracy – Player's ability to hit target.
* w/RISP – With runners in scoring position, top speed, control, and break increases or decreases.
* vs LH Batters – Against left-handed batters.
* VS Runner – With any runners on base.
* Poise – How easily rattled a pitcher is.
* Fastball Life – More bite on fastball pitches.
* Spin – More bite on off-speed and breaking pitches (only works for a pitcher’s pitch with the most amount of movement).
* Release – With runners stealing, how quickly the pitcher delivers the ball to the catcher.
* Recovery – How long until your pitcher is ready to throw again.
* Consistency – How much your ability is affected by your Smiley Face/condition. 4 = Face has less influence. 3 = Normal. 2 = Inconsistent, good condition (RED or PINK Smiley Face) makes you much better, but bad condition (BLUE or PURPLE Smiley Face) makes you stink. So if a player’s got a 2 = Inconsistent Stability and a RED or PINK smiley face, he’s really going to be primed and psyched for the game.

Unlike above where every player is assigned a numerical rating, the next four rows are “all-or-nothing” attributes – a player’s either got it or he doesn’t. Note that all of these are not positive things (i.e. Strikeout or Unclutch)!

* Average Hitter – Easier to get base hits.
* Power Hitter – Easier to hit homeruns.
* Power Slice – Easier to hit for power to the opposite field.
* Control Slice – Easier to slap the ball to the opposite field for a base hit, a la Ichiro.
* 3 Hit – After getting 2 hits, its easier to get a 3rd hit.
* 2 Strike – Easier to hit with 2 strikes. But if you’ve also got Strikeout ability (see below), then this 2 Strike ability only works on full counts (3 Balls, 2 Strikes).
* Bunt – Easier to lay down bunts. (There might be two different Bunt attributes located in this box. I’m not sure. Either way, this box deals with bunting.)
* Infield Hit – Ability to quickly run to 1st base.
* Combo – Easier to hit when the previous batter gets a hit.
* 1st Pitch – Easier to hit 1st pitch in the strike zone.
* Rally Starter – Contact stat increases with no runners on base.
* Strikeout (K) Ability – Harder to hit for contact with 2 strikes. Eliminated on full counts.
* Bases Loaded – Easier to hit with bases loaded.
* Sayonara – Easier to hit when you have a walk-off chance (i.e. you could win the game in this at-bat).
* Come From Behind – Easier to hit when you’re losing.
* Pinch Hitter – Easier to hit when pinch hitting.
* High or Low Ball Hitter – Easier to hit pitches up (if you’re a high-ball hitter) or down (if you’re a low-ball hitter) in the strike zone.
* Head-First Sliding - Slides head-first instead of feet-first.
* Intimidator – Weakens opposing pitcher’s/batter's stats.
* Blooper – Easier for high fly balls to drop in between the infield and outfield for hits.
* Laser Beam – Ability to throw from far away with a lot of power. If you have Laser Beam without Throwing Accuracy, long throws from the outfield have a high chance of being wild.
* Top Defender – Good movement and footwork on defense. You can better avoid baserunners trying to break up double-plays.
* Block – Catcher’s ability to block home plate well. If the baserunner has the Extra/Special Ability of “Home Plate Tackle,” then this “Block” ability cancels it out.
* Spider Catch - Increased ability to rob home-runs over the wall.
* Catcher – Ability to strengthen your pitchers’ attributes.
* Gyroball – More pop on fastball.
* Low Pitcher – Better control with low pitches.
* Heavy Pitcher - Harder for hitters to launch high fly balls.
* Light Pitcher – Easier for hitters to launch high fly balls.
* Escape Pitch - On “mistake” pitches the ball won’t tend to stay over the middle of the plate.
* Homerun Pitch – On “mistake” pitches the ball will tend to stay over the middle of the plate.
* Clutch – Movement and speed increase in the 3rd, 6th, and 9th innings.
* Unclutch – Abilities decrease if leading after 7 innings.
* Walks – Easy to walk batters on 3-ball counts.
* Slow Starter – Abilities decrease in first 3 to 4 innings, if starting.
* Strikeouts – With 2 strikes, Fastball Life and Spin attributes increase to 4.
* Runners Check – Better at checking / picking off baserunners.
* Release Motion – Harder for batters to discern what pitch you’re throwing.
* Reflexes – Easier to catch balls hit back to the mound.
* Lucky – Easier to win games. (Your team’s batting ability might also increase)
* Unlucky – Easier lose games. (Your team’s batting ability might also decrease)
* Short Temper – When rattled, instead of becoming “dizzy” your pitcher’s face turns red and steam comes out of his ears. He’s angry. Your max speed doesn’t drop, but your control drops a lot.
* Poker Face – Your pitcher won’t appear tired (start huffing and puffing) when his stamina runs low. This ability can sometimes be beneficial (especially against a human opponent), but also detrimental (if you’re not attentive to your Smiley Face and pitch count).
* Fighting Spirit – Makes the ball seem heavier (i.e. harder for hitters to launch high fly balls, see “Heavy or Light Pitch” above). Toughness attribute increases to 3.5 if player's toughness is less than 4. Also cancels out “Intimidator” (see above) if the batter has it. This ability activates only when pitcher's in-game ERA is < 2.00, their team is leading by less than 3 runs, and he isn't tired.
* Power Allocation – You tend to make stronger/better pitches to the top of the lineup and weaker ones to the bottom.

- In-depth stat tracking:
Stat lovers rejoice, for Power Pros features some of the most in-depth stat tracking in videogames. One thing I enjoy is the post game pitch analysis screen:



The image above shows a chart for all the pitches thrown by the pitching staff in the played game. You can further filter the chart to a specific pitcher, and even replay their entire pitch sequence in order and the game will report the result (foul tip, swing and miss, strikeout, groundout to short, single to right field, etc).

There's other screens covering box scores, a chart for analyzing batting results, and more.

Season Mode



In the original MLB Pawapuro game, this was called "GM Mode," so I'm unsure if this is a single season mode in the new game or a franchise mode spanning multiple seasons (you'd think the latter considering you have to worry about salaries). I never did manage to play through a full season in the first game, as my Japanese skills are pretty crappy.

Beyond playing a team throughout the course of a season, you also handle many front-office and management tasks as well, many not found in other baseball games. You'll find your standard features here such as making trades, moving players between your club and the AAA affiliate, manage-only mode (similar to MVP 05, with the option to jump into the game at any time), end-of-season awards, and managing salaries, but also some new things including:

-Player training:



You can put various players in various drills to improve specific stats. There's batting practice, baserunning practice, fielding practice, and two practices for pitchers (one for improving top speed/stamina/control, the other for working on breaking pitches). You can also choose to specifically group certain players together during these practices, which may alter the effectiveness of the training depending on how well they all get along. Practices are also affected by...

-Training equipment:
You can purchase equipment to try and improve your training sessions. These are generic items such as bats and gloves with different star ratings that will boost the effectiveness of the associated practice. Note that these items will wear out over time, so a 3-Star bat will eventually become a 2-Star bat which gives a lower boost, etc. 1-Star items will eventually disappear.

Success Mode



One of the main attractions of the Pawapuro games is Success Mode, which is a RPG-esque mode where you create a new player trying to make it to the big leagues. It's not the same thing as MLB The Show's "Road to the Show" mode, as that would be more comparable to Pawapuro's "My Life" mode (though at a basic level, as My Life has way more story than Road to the Show), which unfortunately is not in the MLB games.

If you've been playing the recently released Persona 3, you may be able to compare this mode to that title - a life sim coupled with the "main game" (in this case, baseball). You create your player, choose a position, and customize him the way you want, so you can make a switch-hitting shortstop with a wacky high-motion batting stance or a left-handed pitcher with a 3/4 overhand delivery.



You'll have to choose how your create player spends his time, from what kind of training drills do you want to go through to how often you work your part-time job to earn more cash to what equipment you purchase with said cash.



There are a set of stats unique to Success Mode (such as strength or quickness) that help determine how much your regular stats (i.e. power, run speed, etc). As you do well in training, your stats will increase and your stamina will go down. Each stat will require a different set of training drills to increase them, i.e. to improve power do more strength training. One stat that made it's Pawapuro debut in the last MLB game is "Guts" (looks like they're calling it "Mentality" in the US version?). This stat works as an experience modifier and helps you get better results in other training exercises. This stat can also be improved by a mental training drill, and is also affected by other events such as winning or losing games, or getting paid.



Practicing too much when you're vitality is low increase the chances of injury, forcing you to spend time recovering - meaning time lost that could have been used for training for the next big game!



There's plenty of social interaction in this mode as you interact with teammates, rivals from other teams, your coaching staff, the media, and more. How you respond to these will lead you to different paths, some of which will give you more opportunities to improve your stats.

During actual baseball games, you'll only be controlling your player unless you become captain of your team. So you'll be only taking your at-bats, or pitching when the coach puts you in (note that you'll only pitch if there's a runner on base, otherwise your pitching is simulated...at least this is how it worked in the last MLB game, hopefully we get full control this year). If someone in your infield makes an error and costs you the game, those are the breaks. If you become team captain, everything works as above until the 8th inning, where you have full and complete control of your team for the remainder of the game.

The big reward for completing Success Mode is that your player will then be available to include on any MLB roster in the other game modes. Even better, you can further improve your created player's stats in Season Mode through the various practices and training options there!

Finishing Success Mode also gives you a password code for the player you just created, which you can then share with any other owner of the game so they can add your created player to their rosters!

As mentioned above in the Concerns section, this is the only way to create players in the game, so it may seem tedious for some people who want to quickly create a bunch of new players.

Create-A-Team



You can create your own custom teams using existing or created players. Standard fare for baseball games.

Home Run Challenge





What's a baseball game without a Home Run Derby? Choose a player from any team, including created players, and try to earn as many points as possible. More distance per home run = more points.

Practice Mode

Even the practice modes in the Pawapuro games stand out from other games. There's several different modes available...



In batting practice you choose any batter then any pitcher you want to practice against. You set what kinds of pitches you want thrown (i.e. only fastballs, only breaking balls, a mix of everything, etc) and off you go. While batting practice is continuous, there's a sort of mini-game that happens as well where you try to score as many points as possible for a set of 20 (I think, might be 10) pitches. Anything that would end up as a hit (singles, doubles, triples, home runs) give you a number of points, the better the hit the more points you get. There's also a little meter during batting practice that shows you your timing and how much you're off by in your swing (i.e. you swung 2 seconds too early). You can ignore the mini-game if all you want to do is swing away of course.

Pitching practice is the same thing - you can pitch for as long as you want, but there's a little mini-game where you have to try and hit a target.



This is kinda neat, and is used for fielding practice. You can set the trajectory of a hit ball with the meters shown above, so you can practice fielding literally any type of hit. Do you have issues with hard line drivers that carom in the right-field corner of AT&T Park? Set it up here and practice away.



The above pic is from baserunning practice, and lets you practice with the controls for advancing and retreating base runners. You choose how many base runners you want on the diamonds (max of 4 of course), advancing a runner home lowers the amount by 1.

General Offensive practice basically plays out like a real game, except there are no outs and you're always at-bat. You choose yours teams, set your lineups, and go at it. Same deal with General Defensive except you're always in the field instead of at-bat.

Wii Remote Mode



Exclusive to the Wii version only of course, it looks like these are the same modes that they included in the J-League version of Pawapuro that came out a few months ago. This is basically Wii Sports baseball, except that you can play with MLB players and teams (and created players/teams of course) in addition to your Miis. So if you ever wanted your Mii to take Carlos Zambrano deep, now's your chance.

Concerns

Long-time Pawapuro veterans are well aware of the declining quality of the last few Pawapuro games, but the MLB games are developed by a separate team and the first MLB Pawapuro game managed to avoid many of the larger gaffes seen in the mainline series. There were still a number of minor bugs and issues, but there are a few notable concerns.

- Inaccurate player stats and batting lineups:
This is a biggie with this game being released in the US. In last year's game, it looked like Konami simply looked at the end of season stats for each player and assigned stats accordingly without looking at career performance or season context, so injured players like Thome were given a C for power because of their low HR total. As a result, this affected batting lineups as the CPU tries to setup an optimal batting order with these skewed player stats. They might have been able to get away with this last year with their Japan-only release, but this isn't going to fly at all in the US.

- In-game commentary
Last year's game actually had an option for English commentary, and the results are sub-par compared to western baseball games - the stitching was pretty obvious and resulted in many lines sounding off due to frequent changes in tone and speed. To be fair, since the game was a Japanese-only release there wasn't a need for Konami to polish this up, but with a US release this year hopefully they'll clean this up with 2K's involvement.

- No true player-edit mode.
The only way to create players is through the Success Mode (see below), with no way to edit existing players. Many of the stat issues mentioned above could have been easily addressed with an Edit mode, but without the only real way to do it is to completely replace a player by creating them from scratch, playing them through all of Success Mode, then replacing the original player on the appropriate team roster.

Previews/Impressions
Gaming-Age Preview
Gaming-Age Screenshots
Gamespot Preview

Reviews
To be updated. For now, GameRankings page links are listed below.
GameRankings - Wii
GameRankings - PS2

Videos
Clip showing some training and character interaction in Success Mode.
Short gameplay clip of Cardinals vs Cubs, shows 2 at-bats.
Short clip of the beginning of a game with the Giants vs A's, shows 1 at-bat.

Videos from previous Pawapuro games:

Pawapuro 13 clip showing some pitcher/batter matchups.
Pawapuro 11 clip showing some more pitcher/batter matchups
Pawapuro chant creator/editor (unlikely to be in the MLB games)
Pawapuro clip showing two created teams playing each other in Watch Mode (CPU vs CPU). You can hear various custom created chants in this clip (i.e. Popeye, SMB underground theme)
Pawapuro OP montage created from the OPs of Pawapuro 8 - 13 (uses Pawapuro 10 OP music)
Pawapuro 13 OP sequence
Pawapuro 11 OP sequence
Pawapuro 10 OP sequence
Pawapuro 9 OP sequence

[spit_bubble]

Goodness gracious. 2K Sports should get Konami to do all their baseball games. Between this and Pro Yakyuu Spirits MLB (hypothetical MLB game based on the PYS engine) they'd be set.

[XiaNaphryz]

Holy ****, I completely forgot about this:

Pawapuro chant/fight song creator/editor

Chants can be set per player.

Probably not going to make it for the new MLB game though, as it wasn't in last year's version.

[CMH]

Great info.

But, holy crap, did anyone watch those clips? The fans are crazy! Great atmosphere.

This is why I can't wait for October 2nd. I know we have NBA 2k8 and I'm excited about that but I'm already looking to trade-in APF2k8 for Power Pros.

[XiaNaphryz]

Quote: Originally Posted by YankeePride_YP

But, holy crap, did anyone watch those clips? The fans are crazy! Great atmosphere.

Japanese baseball crowds are indeed a different breed.

[TheMatrix31]

Wow.

If this game ends up having a franchise mode, it's going to be unbelievable.

EDIT: I forgot to actually say thank you for your work. That was great!

[elguapo79]

Thanks VERY much Xia!

Loved reading all of this, and I appreciate very much the time you must have put into it. Can't wait for this game.

[inkcil]

Xia,

Thanks for the info man...the atmosphere in this game has me pumped for the release. I wonder if it will look better on Wii or on PS2?