Pro Baseball: Family Stadium

Pro Baseball: Family Stadium is a baseball video game.

Pro Baseball: Family Stadium was created by Namco programmer Yoshihiro Kishimoto, who had previously worked on games such as Baraduke (1985).[1] The planner for Toy Pop, Takefumi Hyodoh, had transferred from a different section of the company — as his first time being a planner, Hyodoh was rather slow, which left Kishimoto with plenty of free time.[1] For a short while he spent most of his time playing Nintendo's Baseball for the Famicom with some of his colleagues, where during play they would bring up how certain parts of the game could be fixed or improved, notably the lack of names or abilities for the in-game players.[1] Kishimoto also expressed disappointment towards the game's lack of playable defence.[1] Once development of Toy Pop was completed, Kishimoto decided to try making a baseball game of his own.[1]

The project was made for the Family Computer due to the system's massive success in Japan and for Namco's console and arcade operations being part of the same division, allowing Kishimoto to easily begin development of the game in his section of the company.[1] After asking his supervisor about what work he was assigned to next, he was instead told he could make whatever type of game he wanted, due to a lack of work needed by him for the time being.[1] Family Stadium was Kishomoto's first experience with developing a game for the Famicom and with assembly code.[1] It was also Namco's first baseball video game, as prior to the game's release they had released several baseball-themed mechanical arcade games, such as Pitch In (1979) and Batting Chance (1981).

Pro Baseball: Family Stadium was released in Japan on December 10, 1986.[1] A year later, the game was licensed out to Atari Games in North America, which was reskinned and distributed in arcades as Atari R.B.I. Baseball for the Nintendo Vs. System arcade unit — this version was later released for the Nintendo Entertainment System by Tengen as simply R.B.I. Baseball, being one of the company's only three officially-licensed games released for the console.

Upon release, Pro Baseball: Family Stadium was met with critical acclaim by critics. Reviewers applauded its gameplay and sense of realism, as well as its usage of giving each of the players actual names and abilities. The game sold over 2.5 million copies, making it one of the best-selling Famicom games of all time.[3]