So we need a
[upl-image-preview url=//i.imgur.com/cWWQyK2.jpeg]
**Kanzen Chūkei Pro Yakyū Greatest Nine**
**Greatest Nine ‘96**
**Pro Yakyū Greatest Nine ‘97**
**Pro Yakyū Greatest Nine ‘97 Make Miracle**
**Pro Yakyū Greatest Nine ‘98**
**Pro Yakyū Greatest Nine ‘98 Summer Action**
Technically today’s entry can only be Greatest Nine ‘96, which happens to be the best selling game in the series anyway, but it’s more interesting to consider the franchise as a whole. It is rarely brought up in conversations about the Saturn in the West, but Greatest Nine was one of the pillars of the SegaSaturn’s software library in Japan, especially during its brief mainstream success.
While Sega of America is well known for its aggressive and successful licensing of famous sports celebrities to gain a foothold in the US market, the headquarters were also finding their own success on the Mega Drive with tie-ups such as Ayrton Senna’s F1 game [Ayrton Senna’s Super Monaco GPII](https://youtu.be/ypCTC1Uyf9s) and especially their early support of then brand new J.League (the first professional soccer league in Japan). Sega was not only sponsoring the club JEF United but also successfully launched their own soccer simulation called [J.League Pro Striker](https://youtu.be/Ym71kG4qEBE), inciting them to bet heavily on sports for the next generation.
Sega therefore tasked a team at the CS#1 division (the same squad that would largely form the development team Smilebit during the Dreamcast days) to create a realistic soccer simulation – that would become Victory Goal – and a realistic baseball simulation, both showing the appeal of 3D and SegaSaturn’s _next gen_ over the Super Famicom. Both projects were led by Shinyu Tetsuo, one of the lesser known key people of the Saturn generation.
Japanese professional baseball happened to be at a turning point of its history in the 1995 season. The country was still recovering from the Economic Bubble’s burst, and the newborn J.League was more popular among youngsters and women, hence attracting hungrier sponsors. Several baseball clubs were discretely in financial trouble, despite several moves and ownership changes in previous years. The 1995 season ended on a young [Suzuki Ichirō](https://youtu.be/TVWkJh4THBI) leading the Orix BlueWave to a championship against the Yakult Swallows, but this wasn’t the biggest story that year.
Frustrated by stagnating contract negotiations with his club Kintetsu Buffaloes, star pitcher Nomo Hideo found a loophole in the rules of the league and officially "retired from baseball" in order to sign with the LA Dodgers at the beginning of the 1995 season. His first season there was a huge success, leading the national TV station NHK to broadcast his games live in Japan, despite the unconventional scheduling hours caused by the differing timezones. This media sensation made the NPB look even less cool and (as many American sports fans here surely know) led to the normalization (and proper regulation) of the best Japanese talents leaving for the MLB.
It’s in the middle of this peculiar context that Sega had a simple but brillant idea: to licence the NPB for a domestic baseball simulation, and to separately licence Nomo’s rights and endorsement for a MLB version of the same game, that Sega would also be able to sell in North America. And thus, Sega brought us both Kanzen Chūkei Pro Yakyū Greatest Nine (the NPB version) and Nomo Hideo World Series Baseball (_le championnat MLB américain_) in 1995.
https://youtu.be/gCtw6IhxEoo
https://youtu.be/F7njl7yWubc
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From 1997, slowing down on its efforts overseas due to the shellacking they were receiving, Sega refocused on the Greatest Nine version but followed Konami’s model of releasing two versions per year: one at the start of the season in Spring, and one near the end of Summer with adjusted stats and rosters. That’s how the Saturn ended up with an astonishing six Greatest Nine games released between 1995 and 1998 (eight games if you add up the two World Series Baseball entries).
Just like Victory Goal, the most popular episode was the one released in 1996. The main reason is probably timing (Sega had just won the previous Christmas in Japan) but Greatest Nine ‘96 did significantly improve on the rushed first episode, correcting bugs, brushing up the quality and presentation, adding missing stadiums and most importantly speeding up the game significantly.
Here is a sample of the game and its memorable Nineties Japanese Hip Hop introduction, showcasing the finalist teams of the previous year, the Orix BlueWave and Yakult Swallows, which I mentioned earlier.
https://youtu.be/szJudkx6FVY
As you can see, the first two games relied on a Mortal Kombat-style digitalization of real human beings. From 1997, the series turned to a much more elaborate 3D engine, also making use of motion capture for its animations. Sega also added more team customizations (as well as a Nights original team you can appreciate below).
https://youtu.be/OiLz7avgm78
As Konami had instead opted for a _chibi_ art style (and 2D sprites) for its popular Pawapuro series, Sega’s offer was the most realistic series on the market – an angle which aligned with the marketing of Victory Goal as well as Saturn’s more adult, *core gamer* image in Japan. Greatest Nine was the [Pro Yakyū Spirits](https://youtu.be/TlK-K0E6cG8) of that generation.
Also, here is a better look at Pro Yakyū Greatest Nine ‘98 Summer Action‘s cover because I am pretty sure it is one of the greatest baseball game covers ever designed.
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On the Dreamcast, Sega went for a completely different approach – perhaps mistakenly? – by aping Konami’s art style.
https://youtu.be/h06Z6iZb-EI
One big reason for this change is that Sega was, by then, doing much better with its sports management series (the _Tsuku_ series) than the actual sports games. By using the same engine for both its baseball game and its baseball management game, Smilebit thought it could save time and money while allowing players to transfer data from one game to another. Alas, the fate of Dreamcast did not allow for Sega to build on this idea very long.
As for the Greatest Nine series, it only reappeared once on the Game Boy Advance in 2002 (Americans know it as Baseball Advance). Unfortunately, this version sacrificed many features found in the Saturn version and didn’t leave a mark. Ending the franchise not with a thunderous strike but with a sloppy flyball.
https://youtu.be/lpK88-jTTMg
Things did not turn out much better for Japanese baseball with the new century. Suzuki Ichirō left the BlueWave for the MLB in 2001, winning the first MVP award for a Japanese player that same year.
At the end of the 2004 season, the Kintetsu Buffaloes (Nomo Hideo’s former club) fused quite symbolically with the Orix BlueWave (Suzuki Ichirō’s former club) to become the Square Enix – oops sorry I mean the Orix Buffaloes. [This led to a huge mess.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Nippon_Professional_Baseball_realignment)
But here is a nice wink of History. This 2021 season has not only ended with [a pitcher becoming the second Japanese MVP of American baseball](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQgGftwSjIs) exactly twenty years after Ichiro, but the finals in Japan this week features the Orix Buffaloes vs. the Yakult Swallows, the same two teams that battled for the championship in the season when everything changed forever for Japanese baseball.
