Ninja Baseball Bat Man



" "This is a special message about something that just changed my life. A game called Ninja Baseball Bat Man... That's the best title ever conceived by a human being, or an alien, or whatever, or whoever come up with this. Does it live up to the title?

It surpasses the title! (...) (the title) got me to play and then it hit me in the face with a grand-slam atomic bomb blast of video game goodness.""

- The Angry Video Game Nerd, saying something good about a video game

A wacky beat 'em up made by Irem in 1993. In this game, four baseball-themed ninja superheroes are hired by the commissioner of a baseball museum to retrieve a golden statue of Babe Ruth, as well as the statue's matching golden baseball equipment, when they're stolen by the evil Jado syndicate. They must travel all over the major cities of the USA to recover the pieces and assemble the statue so it can be returned safely.

A good game, underrated, and sometimes MAME can't quite handle it.

This game provides examples of:

 * Action Bomb: Mini baseball robots will try to latch on and blow themselves up along with you.
 * Animate Inanimate Object: Several of the Mooks you face are baseballs, baseball bats, baseball gloves, cards, and there's also the floating stuff that the poltergest attacks you with.
 * As for bosses, The Defending Slot, the Ghost Buffalo.
 * AI Breaker: The Final Boss is pretty hard if you try to get up close to him, because of his tornado swing move that does a lot of damage and has very good range and priority. If you stay far from him though, he'll use a baseball slide which is very easy to counter via your normal attack (don't stay too far, or else he'll whip out the electirfied bat).
 * Batter Up: Duh.
 * Big Bad:
 * Big Boo's Haunt: The Texas stage.
 * Blind Idiot Translation: Some of the boss names, like "Mad Lax", "Defending Slot" and the especially odd "Makeshift Villain".
 * The last one actually kind of makes sense, considering.
 * Blow You Away: Windy Plane.
 * Cast From Hit Points: The Mega Home Run (only if it connects), as well as each character's elemental Limit Break.
 * Chekhov's Gun: The statue that was stolen from the museum.
 * Color-Coded Multiplayer
 * Captain Jose: The Hero and Jack of All Stats
 * Twinbats Ryno: Kid Appeal Fragile Speedster
 * Beanball Roger: The Big Guy and Mighty Glacier
 * Stick Straw: The Lancer and Glass Cannon
 * Combos: Characters have combos, being even able to perform variations by pushing the joystick.
 * Conservation of Ninjutsu: Well, since there's four of you against an entire criminal organization...
 * Degraded Boss: Windy Plane shows up in the final level, as the final opponent just before the final boss fight.
 * Desperation Attack: The Mega Home Run. Can sometimes one-shot weaker foes.
 * Dual-Wielding: Twin Bats Ryno/Green.
 * Elemental Powers:
 * Captain Jose: Playing With Fire
 * Twinbats Ryno: Blow You Away and Shock and Awe
 * Beanball Roger: Dishing Out Dirt
 * Stick Straw: Making a Splash
 * Elite Mook: The umpire enemies, which can take a lot of damage compared to the regular mooks, and can also guard with their armor.
 * Epic Flail: Beanball Roger/Yellow, who wields a heavy bat with a large ball on the end.
 * Evil Laugh / The Hyena: The baseball gloves laughs like hyenas when they successfully land a hit. The final boss laugh is more regular evil laugh.
 * Excuse Plot: Taken to the wacky extreme!
 * Expy: The four playable characters are based on real-life baseball players:
 * Captain Jose/Red: Jose Canseco.
 * Twin Bats Ryno/Green: Ryne Sandberg.
 * Beanball Roger/Yellow: Roger Clemens.
 * Stick Straw/Blue: Darryl Strawberry.
 * Falling Chandelier of Doom: Seen in the Texas stage. It doesn't do any damage if it drops on you, though.
 * Fingerless Gloves: The player characters as well as the pink and white dancers who assist them at times.
 * Flunky Boss: Mad Lax, who drops a bunch of crocodile car enemies even now and then.
 * Makeshift Villain will summon the dogs with Tommy-guns for about 3/4 of the fight.
 * Giving Up the Ghost: Enemies may sometimes die like this, with music from Fur Elise for some reason.
 * The Gunslinger: The Tommy-gun armed dogs are a Type B and C: The Vaporizer and The Woo respectively. They shoot like crazy and have a rolling back jump where they fire in the air giving them a brief float.
 * Helpful Mook: The burger enemies in the Texas stage. They can initially hurt you, but as soon as you hit them once, their eyes fall off, and then they become a food item that restores a good amount of health. Best of all, they appear in large numbers.
 * Highly-Visible Ninja: The four player characters.
 * Hyperactive Metabolism: Eating food regenerates your health instantly.
 * Improbable Weapon User: Bats instead of ninja swords.
 * There's also the enemy who attacks with his static-electrified hair, and another that drops a 16-ton weight on you.
 * Instant Awesome, Just Add Ninja
 * The Mafia: The whole Chicago stage.
 * Metronomic Man Mashing: Beanball Roger's Foil Buster.
 * Mini Boss: The baseball golem, made up of multiple baseball Mooks.
 * Mooks: Ranges from baseballs to ghosts and even mobster DOGS!
 * Ninja: The protagonists and the main motif of this game.
 * Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot: One of the bosses is an alligator, a cyborg, a scientist and a brawler.
 * They player characters count as well.
 * Personal Space Invader: Quite a number of enemies have a very annoying grab move, such as the mini walking bombs and the pink dog mafia.
 * Press X to Not Die/Smashing Survival: An early arcade example. There are certain enemies can grab you, and you need to either shake the joystick back and forth or press the attack button rapidly.
 * Recovery Attack: Both the players as well as the bosses have it.
 * The Red Mage: Stick Straw
 * Revenge: Captain Jose,
 * Sentient Vehicle: Windy Plane.
 * Shoryuken: Windy Plane, the first boss.
 * Shout Out: The arcade flyer has references to Undercover Cops, R-Type III and Hammerin' Harry. An advert for Mystic Riders appears in the first level.
 * One of the mooks is an robot that resembles the Flatwoods Monster.
 * Shows Damage: Rare for a Beat-Em-Up game. Most of the bosses have parts that drop off as soon as they take enough damage. In one case (Mechanical Alligator), his tail drops off and starts to attack you!
 * Underground Monkey: While the enemy variety is large there are some palette swaps that do different attacks. The playing cards with arm cannons have unique attacks: The orange cards has charge attack, the yellow cards shoots flames, the green cards open themselves up to shoots a giant metal fist, and the blue ones spin like a tornado.
 * Vehicular Assault: The second boss, Mad Lax. Windy Plane also counts.
 * Weaponized Exhaust: The small car enemies have a form of it, they shoot out a cloud of smoke that tries to literally choke your character!
 * Widget Series: WJT because it's a Japanese-developed arcade game, WHAT because an American came up with the whole premise.
 * What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made On Drugs?
 * Word Salad Title
 * Word Salad Title