Power Pros

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Powerful Pro Baseball, previously known as Jikkyō Powerful Pro Yakyū^[a] and marketed internationally as Power Pros, is a Japanese baseball video game series created by Konami. The game is known for its super deformed characters, and fast-paced but deep game play.^[2] Most games in the series are developed under license from the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) and the Japan Professional Baseball Players Association (JPBPA), letting them use the league's team names, stadiums, colors, and players' names and likenesses. There are also six games in the series with the Major League Baseball (MLB) and Major League Baseball Players Association (MLBPA) license, two with the Korea Baseball Organization (KBO) and Korea Professional Baseball Players Association (KPBPA), and one with the World Baseball Classic license. It is long running in Japan, starting out in 1994 for the Super Famicom, and appearing on many different consoles: Saturn (1995–1997), PlayStation (1994–2003), Nintendo 64 (1997–2001), PlayStation 2 (2000–2009), Dreamcast (2000), GameCube (2002–2006), Wii (2007–2009), PlayStation 3 (2010–2016), PlayStation 4 (since 2016) as well as PlayStation Portable (2007–2013) and Vita (2012-2018).

The game has two spin-off series: Professional Baseball Spirits, a baseball sports simulation series with more realistic graphics and physics, and Power Pro Kun Pocket. The latter was released on handheld systems between 1999 and 2011 with versions for the Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo DS. Although the series was originally designed as the side-story of Success mode and was part of the main series, Konami retroactively declared it as a separate series.

On May 12, 2006, a version of Power Pro was released featuring Major League Baseball players, under the title Jikkyō Powerful Major League. The Power Pro series has featured online play since its tenth incarnation on the PS2 and its first handheld version on the PlayStation Portable. A version of Power Pro was announced for the PlayStation 3, first shown at the Tokyo Game Show in 2005, but it would take another five years for the series to reach the PS3, with the system instead getting Power Pro's sister series, Professional Baseball Spirits, for the interim. On August 3, 2007, an American release of the series was announced for both the PlayStation 2 and the Wii.^[3] The game, titled MLB Power Pros, was published by 2K,^[3] and features a Success Mode set within Major League Baseball.^[3]

The most distinctive feature of the Power Pro series is its odd depiction of characters. The basic design of the Power Pro baseball player is a short figure with an excessively wide, gashapon capsule-shaped head, lacking a mouth, nose, ears with expression being mainly in the eyebrows. Power Pros characters are somewhat similar to the character Rayman, in that they do not have legs and thus their feet are not connected to their body. Power Pros characters do have arms and hands; however, their hands are fingerless and bear more resemblance to a sphere than a human hand. The Power Pro series has used this comic design in all of its games.

In Japan, the series has been critically acclaimed and commercially successful, while in North America it received mixed to generally favorable reviews^[4][5] and sold poorly.^[6] As of March 2023^[update], the series has sold over 24.7 million copies, in addition to 48 million mobile game downloads as of October 2022^[update].^[7]

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