Rusty's REAL DEAL BASEBALL

I really hope this gets a western release, but it's one of the most exciting download-only Nintendo games that I've played since Pullblox, probably, and what essentially amounts to Nintendo's first "free-to-play" title (as you probably know)

I think it's from the WarioWare team (the team before Intelligent Systems took over), the music feels very much like it and the minigames are really, really good. So much inventiveness from what they've built it from: the pitcher, the batter, a ball and a bat.

All the minigames have been wonderful and a lot of them take brilliant advantage of 3DS's motion controls -- one asks you to pitch balls to hit far away dart-like targets, another asks you to catch the balls. But it always throws in extra rules and variations as you work through the challenges (and are graded depending on performance), like there might be gusts of wind, or the targets might start moving. Or it might change the rules entirely, each 4DS game (which you buy from the shop) doesn't always stick to the central theme that it starts off with.

And then there's the endless challenges in each 4DS game, which can earn you new outfits and provide a lot of replay value if you end up getting the best rank on every 'normal' and 'hard' challenge set (of which there are 50 for each 4DS game).

It's just brilliant, and the presentation's really charming.

The shopping aspect's really refreshing as well. Do well in the 4DS games/minigames and you'll earn stamps to a card, eventually unlocking vouchers and items. So when you return to the central shop to buy more games you can use said discount vouchers in both percentage terms and absolute terms (but only on non-story games) to purchase more. I never paid more than 220 yen for mine, down from the 400 standard price. The 150 yen I paid for some only amounts to about 90p, which is crazy good value given how good the minigames are.

For the story-based games you have to negotiate with the storekeeper using set items (nose hair clipper, some voucher thing, a bouquet and so on), each 'go' using up a consumable item. And this is where I'm a bit stumped, While I don't mind paying 400 yen for the games, the first game I bought I managed to get down to 200 yen through this negotiation, but I was only able to get the second down to 340 yen and I've made no progress on the next.

But yes, this is a great way for Nintendo to do in-game purchasing, since the prospect of making payments in-game is actually made fun. And the actual games themselves haven't been altered to suit any new business models. I'm suddenly a bit more excited about that Steel Diver game that's on the way...

Mr. Head, I've read this twice, I've Google Image Searched it... I'm still mega-confused! But it sounds like the quirky fun thing the last WarioWare should have been.

Oh yeah I downloaded this the other day and it is quite fun

I watched a vid if this on YouTube & it sadly looks too bizarre to ever come out over here.

Jimbob wrote:

Mr. Head, I've read this twice, I've Google Image Searched it... I'm still mega-confused! But it sounds like the quirky fun thing the last WarioWare should have been.

My bad! Think of it as those unlockable minigames in WarioWare except with a lot more depth and content to each one, wrapped up in a freemium package where you can buy access to any game but haggle the price down at it too.

So this is getting localised for America and is now called "Rusty's Real Deal Baseball".

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2014/02/14/hands-on-impressions-of-steel-driver-sub-wars-and-rustyas-real-deal-baseball

Not sure if it will come over here. It seems we might be getting Calciobit instead.

I was delighted to hear this was localised, less so that we're missing out (as is the case with Chibi Robo Photography).

I am very interested in how the localisation has been done, though, look at the shopkeeper:

So, Fronkhead suggested on twitter that I should post my opinions here.

I downloaded this last night on my US 3DS and I'm actually really liking it. There's quite a sad tale of Rusty Slugger's wife leaving him with the kids... The upshot is you actually feel guilty for haggling down the price and you want to buy games in order to make him happier.



I'm posting images from the game on Miiverse, under my US NNID - which I had to make in order to download - I'm AxisUSA.

I'm both feeling jealous (that I can't play it in English) and guilty. The guilt's mainly down to me playing it in Japanese and not realising how sad Rusty's tale is. I got those games down to 200 yen if I remember correctly. (Well except the ones near the end of the list which get as cheap) What a cretin I was.

I'll have to share that guilt as well