Gaming

Japan Has a New Baseball Game, and It’s a Shame That ‘Professional Baseball Spirits 2024-2025’ Isn’t Available in the States

‘Professional Baseball Spirits’ looks to push the medium of baseball video games to new heights, but it’s only available overseas.

Key art of Professional Baseball Spirits
Screenshot: Konami

Baseball games are some of the most entertaining sports games on the market. Indeed, there’s nothing like hitting a home run and bringing home a big win. With games like MLB: The Show starting to follow the same cut-and-paste recipe other sports games are known for, it’s about high time proper competition was introduced. And Japan has the answer to our Baseball blues: Professional Baseball Spirits.

A screenshot of Professional Baseball Spirits
Screenshot: Konami

Take Me Out to the Ball Game (With a Japanese PSN Account)

The Professional Baseball Spirits series has been running for quite some time. But lately, social media sites like TikTok have been blowing up with gameplay footage of the latest entry in the franchise, and for good reason. The game looks stunning. From realistic animations that make MLB: The Show look like an amateur project, to phenomenal lighting and detail. Professional Baseball Spirits 2024-2025 looks like a dream come to life.

Videos by VICE

Video by The Famicast on YouTube

Me being me, I had to dive in deeper to find out more about this game. Everything I’ve seen about it has me itching to create a Japanese PSN account and get it downloaded straight away. The funniest part? I don’t really even care about Baseball that much. It just looks like a really good time.

While Professional Baseball Spirits 2024-2025 is currently only available on the Japanese PSN or through sites like PlayAsia, it does feature a fair bit of English. At least, enough for folks to be able to navigate through menus. It looks like it’s got more flair than The Show, and offers a more cohesive and beautiful experience all in all. I just really hope that Konami sees the general hype for this game and brings a native English version in the future to put the pressure on MLB: The Show.

I’ve slowly begun to accept that I like sports games more than I’d initially led myself to believe. Maybe I’ve just burned out of playing the same game year after year. Games like Maximum Football have brought me back into the Gridiron once more. I still have fun with yearly releases, but seeing that proper competition is finally coming out of the woodwork gives me hope that they’ll improve their products even further.