| Aa Yakyū Jinsei Itchokusen | |
|---|---|
Cover art |
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| Developer(s) | Sammy Studios[1] |
| Publisher(s) | Sammy Studios[2] |
| Platform(s) | Family Computer[2] |
| Release date(s) | |
| Genre(s) | Action[3] Sports[3] Strategy[3] Board game[2] |
| Mode(s) | Single-player[3] Multiplayer[3] (2-4 players with alternating turns) |
Aa Yakyū Jinsei Itchokusen (嗚呼! 野球人生一直線, "Straight Baseball Life")[4] is a Family Computer video game.
Contents |
The plot of the game involves playing the character of a rising young baseball star and turning him into a professional baseball player.[3] During the course of the game, the player must brave the advantages and disadvantages of growing up and becoming a man as the temptations of childhood, adolescence, and young adulthood threaten to undermine his ability to make money as a professional ball player.[5] The manufacturer's suggested retail price of the game was 7,300 yen (approximately $55 USD) at the day of release.[4]
If the player lands in a humiliation square, there is a chance that the character will get his underwear placed on top of his head. Being victimized by this disaster will always cause the player to lose three points in every statistic.[6] The player could also be rushed to the hospital for an emergency (which causes an identical amount of damage to his statistics). During the game, the player can use the powers of the occult to either help him improve his stats or to hinder an opponent in many different ways. In addition to using the occult to increase or decrease a player's stats, spirits can also be invoked to cause an opponent to lose his next turn.
As the player advances in age and becomes more attractive,[3] the system used to move a player evolves as the game progresses from early childhood to young adulthood. The game starts out with Rock-paper-scissors to provide an element of childhood diplomacy and the innocence of the elementary school years. Once the player graduates to high school and matures in his thinking, the childhood diplomacy is replaced by a power meter.[3] The longer the player waits to hit the action button, the further he goes on the board. But if he waits too long, then he doesn't move at all and misses a turn.[3] When transferring between elementary school and high school or between high school and the real world, the player must impress both his father and the head coach by doing interactive miniature games. These vital exercises involve physical fitness exercises that would be considered useful in baseball. Running around all the bases in less than twenty seconds and running across a field with a tire behind his back in less than ten seconds are the challenges that the head coach will give to the player. In addition to how fast the player can keep hitting the action button, the weight and height of the player's virtual identity will play an important role in the success of the exercises.[3]
Self-esteem is boosted when the player successfully completes the athletic assignment; this is naturally followed by a promotion to either a more prestigious high school or to be assigned to a generic minor league team with ties to the Nippon Professional Baseball organization. Failure will make the father angry because a son usually looks up to his father for advice; causing a decline in self-esteem. The player will also be relegated to either a less prestigious high school or play for a second rate minor league team because of his performance at the miniature game.[3]
After the player graduates from high school, the "power meter" method of moving the player across the board is replaced by a virtual batting screen. This is meant to represent a real-world baseball situation. If the player misses the ball when he is up to bat, the consequence would involve losing a turn to the next player. There are numbers with a value between one and six on a wall; successfully hitting the ball to one of the spaces moves the player in that many number of spaces around the baseball diamond. The player must strive to get drafted when the player reaches home base.[3] Otherwise, he must take a vacation and train to get drafted in the next round. There is a mini-game to determine the player's starting annual salary when he gets drafted; professional baseball salaries start out at 100,000,000 yen and can reach a maximum of 600 trillion yen depending on his timing at the mini-game.
The player's salary is also indirectly influenced by the stats accumulated throughout the game. After the starting salary is determined, the player's avatar signs with the professional baseball team.[5] The newly minted pro baseball player proceeds to look up in the starry sky as part of the game's closing title because that is where his father showed him all the stars in the game's opening title (i.e., when he was a child).
There are five stats to worry about in the game: weight (in kilograms); affected by eating food, height (in centimetres);[3] affected by drinking milk, stamina,[3] charisma,[3] and self-esteem (face).[5] Statistics in the three main developmental characteristics (stamina-charisma-self esteem) can actually go into the negative if the player has bad luck with the choices that are offered near the beginning of the game.
However, it is impossible for the player to become a father himself because the primary goal of the game is to become the number one draft choice of a professional baseball team. Also excluded from the game are the concepts of marriage, divorce, purchasing some form of real estate like a house or a mansion, and the inevitable aspect of retiring from professional baseball. The game only permits male characters to be created for the purpose of a single game because the Japanese -kun (くん) suffix is used rather than the Japanese -chan (ちゃん) suffix for young females. Due to the subject matter of the game, there is no possible way of making a female character using either normal methods or any form of cheating.