pawapuro

Jikkyō Powerful Pro Yakyū (実況パワフルプロ野球) is a series of baseball simulation/visual novel games made by KONAMI.

How I came across this franchise:

To set the stage, it was late 2021 and I was becoming weirdly obsessed with sports (particularly baseball and hockey). My first introduction to PawaPuro was this Larry Bundy Jr video about "Five Unbelievably Massive Franchises You've Probably Never Heard Of"

I don't remember a single line from that video, but after I watched it, something inside me of shifted. For the next 3 years or so, I spent every waking moment of my life obsessing over this franchise, (trying to) play the game on emulators and drawing fanart of the characters. I would "try" to talk about this game with everyone who would listen but they didn't know WTF I was even talking about. I even started learning Japanese just to play this game.

I'm not as obsessed now, but I still keep tabs on the franchise from time to time. I'm excited for PawaPuro 2026-2027.

...But enough about me, let's dive in.

The history of PawaPuro:

pawapuro

In 1991, Konami developed and published a game called Namachuukei 68 (生中継６８) for the Sharp X6800 home computer. Namachuukei 68, unlike PawaPuro, had more realistic-looking graphics. Development on PawaPuro '94 probably began some time afterwards.

During development, the game was meant to be realistic looking like its predecessor, but due to limitations of the Super Famicom, which would cause the game to be choppy and stiff, the game's art style had to go in a more cartoony direction. The original super-deformed Pawapuro-kun was designed by Kenji Fujioka (藤岡謙治).

The first game with a Success mode, Jikkyō Powerful Pro Yakyū 3, came out on February 29th, 1996. The mode was based off of the gameplay of Tokimeki Memorial, another game developed by Konami. Tokimeki was very popular amongst the PawaPuro development team; so they decided to create a mode inspired by it.

The history of this franchise is very long and storied and I don't think I could ever do it justice so I'm going to leave it at that.

Characters:

Pawapuro-kun (パワプロくん)

Mr. Baseball himself. He is the main character and mascot of the PawaPuro series; appearing in all games and related media since the release of the first game.

Akio Yabe (矢部明雄)

Pawapuro-kun's glasses-wearing comedic relief otaku friend introduced in PawaPuro 3. He says "Deyansu~" (でやんす) alot and there are multiple variants of him.


Mamoru Ikari (位猪狩守)

Pawapuro-kun's cool rival introduced in the same game as Akio. He has a little brother named Susumu Ikari (猪狩進) who was introduced in PawaPuro 5.

Intresting Links:

  • 30-30.club
    (EN) Website/Blog dedicated to all sorts of Baseball video games.
  • Natsu no Kaze
    (IT) Blog that covers Baseball-themed video games and anime, including PawaPuro.
  • PawaSpi Point
    (JP) Currently, the offical PawaPuro/ProSpi site.
  • Poke-Works
    (JP) Pawapuro-kun Pocket (PawaPoke) fan site with a lot of content.
  • PawaPuro Player Ability Summary Wiki
    (JP) WikiWki site with stats for almost every character in the series.
  • MLB Power Pros World
    (EN) Wiki dedicated to WBSC Power Pros and the MLB Power Pros duology.
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