Chapter 170: The Release of Professional Baseball Manager
Chapter 170: The Release of Professional Baseball Manager
Professional Baseball Manager received overall praise, and in some places, fanatical reactions, so it was released amid high expectations.
Tolui was a twenty-nine-year-old Orc and a baseball fanatic. He basically liked sports. He actually had fairly good athletic reflexes, so he had enjoyed sports during his school days, and on weekends, he often played baseball with club members at a nearby field.
It had not been very long since he first encountered computer games.
In truth, he was not particularly interested in electronic games. However, because he had a wide circle of acquaintances, he was friendly with many different kinds of people, and among them were people who liked arcades or games.
He had followed them to arcades a few times, and once, he had even gone along to a game tournament. It had been better than he expected.
Moreover, after the service called Spirit Space came out, he became more familiar with computers. It was an excellent service for meeting people and being active socially.
But not every game suited him. He did not care much for role-playing games or simulations.
They’re just too frustrating.
His thinking was that once he did something, the fun had to come immediately, like sports.
That was why he only enjoyed simple Action Games or sports games.
“Hmm. Professional Baseball Manager?”
The reason he now picked up this package at an electronics store after coming there for the first time in a while and headed to the register was because he thought it was the kind of sports game he knew.
“Yes. That will be 55 Del.”
It was more expensive than he expected, so he flinched briefly. But he belatedly noticed that the package said it was for PC and decided to pay anyway. Since it was a sports game, he had assumed it was a Talados game. But if it was a PC game, it was not particularly expensive.
However, when he got home and tried to open the package, he had a slightly ominous thought. Somehow, it did not seem like the sports game he had imagined. PC games and Talados games often had different tendencies.
Moreover, the word “manager” in the title bothered him.
Could it be manager as in celebrity manager?
For a moment, Tolui imagined a game about taking care of things behind the scenes for sports players. He felt uneasy, but since he had already bought it, there was nothing he could do, so he opened the package.
Then he immediately installed the game on his hard disk.
He did not know much about computers, so he had bought one according to a friend’s recommendation. He had bought the hard disk together with it at the time, and it was definitely convenient. Truly, swapping diskettes while playing games was unbearable.
In any case, after finishing the installation, he launched the game.
“Oh. The graphics are good.”
His first impression was good.
Not all sports games were like this, but many of them had low quality. In particular, most either had no illustrations at all or had illustrations that were hopelessly crude.
But in this game’s opening, baseball players appeared in poses where they hit balls or chose pitches on the mound, and the quality was truly high.
At this level, they’d actually be nice to make into posters and hang at home.
“Huh? Isn’t that Puchichi?”
Moreover, things like cards began appearing, and the illustration inside one of them was of a real professional player. Since this was his first time seeing something like this, his interest was instantly drawn in. That Dwarf with tremendously muscular arms and a protruding lower lip beneath a gray beard was definitely Puchichi, famous as a power hitter.
Previous sports games were often made on low budgets, so in many cases, they did not even consider contacting the professional baseball side. No, even if they somehow obtained the rights, they probably would not have been able to represent them properly.
However, when Tolui entered the game in earnest with those expectations, he became deeply disappointed.
He had thought he might be able to become one of those professional players and play baseball, but that was not the case. It was too far from what he had imagined, with things like setting positions and planning training.
If it had been a game with another subject, he probably would have quit right there. But because Tolui was such a baseball fanatic, his interest continued despite his disappointment, and because this management side was also something he basically knew about, there was not much to learn, so he began following along in a so-so way.
Oh... this guy was a player from West Mountain, right?
And when he saw several familiar faces among the players he managed, it started to feel somewhat fun. Tolui did like strong players, but that did not mean he only cheered for A-rank players.
There were times when unnoticed players suddenly performed brilliantly, and as a baseball fanatic, he had witnessed quite a few such cases. Even aside from that, there were times when he developed affection for players in unexpected ways.
And even players who were not doing particularly well were still people active as players in the professional baseball league he admired.
Being a team owner really is a dream.
Even if it was virtual, it felt as though he had slightly fulfilled a dream.
Like that, Tolui gradually developed interest, and although he was not used to this genre, he began to find it fun.
After experiencing several losses and victories and building his roster through trades, he completely became a fan of the game.
“Huh?! It’s dinner time?”
When he suddenly came to his senses, the sun outside the window had already set, and the beggars in his stomach were rioting. But he could not bring himself to get up from his seat.
Of course, he could save and pause the game, but this match was too important. His team was stuck in fifth place in the Southern League, and they had to win this time to participate in the National League.
“Ugh...”
But he was too hungry, so in the end, he stood up. Then he hurriedly bought several hamburgers from a nearby Quick & Fun Burger, spread them out on the table in front of his computer, and began playing again while chewing them down in haste.
Quick & Fun Burger was no longer only beside Arcade Game Land. It now had an enormous number of branches all over the Smythe Republic.
“Oh!! As expected of Queltas!”
His team was still only a weak team, so he had not managed to bring in any special-class players. But because he knew baseball inside and out, he discovered an Elf player named Queltas, who was underrated because his pitch speed was low but had excellent control and was skilled with breaking balls. He threw his entire budget into bringing him in.
Thanks to that, he successfully shut down the opposing team’s offense and won the match by two points. It was truly exhilarating. It felt even better than watching the team he cheered for win at a stadium.
It was his team, and the players he had recruited won through his training method and the strategy he had created.
So this is what a god-tier game is...
He felt as though he finally understood what gamers on Spirit Space meant when they raved about god-tier games. Then he completely forgot that he had said he would stop here and rest, and began preparing for the next match.
Leaving the remains of hamburgers scattered across the table.
“Ah...!”
Fortunately, if it could be called fortunate, he narrowly lost the next match and failed to advance to the National League. If he had kept winning, he probably would not have been able to take his hands off the keyboard until he won the championship.
At least because he lost and came back to his senses, he was now picking up the trash on the table.
Ugh... I should wash first.
Tolui checked the clock on the wall, only then realized he had to go to work tomorrow, and headed to the shower with a sigh.
But when he returned with steam rising from his body, he went back to the computer instead of going to bed. It was not because he intended to play the game again.
He knew he had not been in his right mind today.
It really was fun.
He simply wanted to talk about it a little on Spirit Space. Since he had enjoyed it so much, he wanted to see how other people felt and whether there was any useful information.
<LOLLOLLOLLOLLOL>
That was the first post he saw as soon as he entered. It seemed he was not the only one who had gotten so absorbed that he lost track of time. Tolui unconsciously smiled.
Other than that, the board was noisy with game talk, with people praising the game, saying they had won or lost, discussing which players they recruited, or complaining that they wanted to recruit someone but lacked too much money.
Most of the posts were ones Tolui could easily sympathize with, so he continued reading them with a smile on his face. Spirit Space truly was an incredible service. In the past, it would not have been easy to feel this kind of shared understanding.
No matter how actively one socialized, there was a limit to the number of people one could meet, and individual areas of activity were limited, so finding people one could truly talk to required great luck.
Hmm?
But among the bulletin board posts, there were some he did not quite understand.
<Another dud!!!>
<Ah! 21 Tomaker showed up!>
They were clearly talking about recruiting players, but the wording was strange for trades or prospect discovery.
So he looked through the posts more carefully and soon realized they were about Multiplayer Mode.
<Ah! Lift the card sale limit already!!>
<Can’t you just make your younger sibling buy them? That’s what I did.>
<My younger sibling plays too.>
<Ah...>
Tolui had seen Network League in the menu too. But he had intended to play Single Mode first, so he did not pay it any attention, and later, he became so absorbed in the game that he completely forgot about it.
But it seems pretty different from Single Mode.
First of all, there seemed to be a major difference in player recruitment methods. Tolui noticed the word “card pack” appearing frequently in those posts. So he looked up what that meant.
“Cards?”
At first, he felt some resistance to the fact that they were bought with real money. But when he heard they were cards printed with player illustrations, his mind changed immediately.
In the room where Tolui was currently using the computer, signed gloves, balls, baseball bats, and other items were displayed here and there. As a baseball fanatic, he had a strong interest in items like these, so regardless of the game, he wanted those cards.
<Anyway, the card illustrations are really well done.>
Moreover, after looking around a little, most evaluations said the quality was good.
Because of that, Tolui still did not know much about Multiplayer Mode, but as a baseball fan, he decided he had to go buy this new item first.
“Wow... the people...”
Tolui headed to a nearby Arcade Game Land on the weekend.
Because there were so many customers looking for MTC and Professional Baseball Manager cards that it was interfering with business, Game Land had separated the store.
Even so, there were so many people buying card packs that Tolui instinctively made a fed-up expression. It truly felt as though he had come to a train station.
The IP Management Team had once failed to release card packs simultaneously during the launch of MTC. Thanks to that experience, this time they had succeeded in releasing the card packs almost simultaneously with the game.
Professional Baseball Manager card packs had only just been released, and although they were not as sought-after as MTC, which was already a massive trend, the number of people looking for them was still enormous.
“Give me Professional Baseball Manager card packs!”
“Yes, yes!! One moment!”
So much so that Tolui, waiting in line, worried the stock might run out. Fortunately, the line steadily shrank, and his turn arrived.
“Um. Do you have Professional Baseball Manager card packs?”
“Ah, yes. How many packs would you like?”
The sales employee was a fresh-looking Orc woman wearing a baseball uniform. It was not that he fell in love at first sight or anything, but she was quite pleasant to look at, so Tolui unconsciously smiled.
“Five packs, please.”
Tolui asked for five, the limited quantity he had already checked beforehand, and was able to purchase them safely. Holding them in his hands, he glanced once at the sales employee before turning and leaving.
It was his first time buying something called card packs, so it felt a little awkward, but it was not a bad store.
Translator’s Notes:
Managing Game — A simulation genre where the player manages a team, organization, or business rather than directly controlling the action.
Breaking Ball — Baseball pitch that curves or changes direction due to spin, such as a curveball or slider.