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Ninja Baseball Bat Man
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Ninja Baseball Bat Man
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==Development== When Irem America opened its U.S. office in 1988 in [[Redmond, Washington]] headed up by Frank Ballouz (founder of FABTEK, a thriving video kit company and had such hits as Cabal, Toki, Blood Brothers etc., as well as a North American publisher of several titles in [[Seibu Kaihatsu]]' ''[[Raiden (series)|Raiden]]'' series) and National Sales Manager Drew Maniscalco. During this time, Drew created the "Ninja Baseball Bat Man" video game concept (including the English title, plot and characters) and licensed it to Irem America in 1991.{{Citation needed|date=April 2010}} The first names of the four main characters were named after the first names of four baseball stars of that time: [[Jose Canseco]] (red), [[Ryne Sandberg]] (green), [[Roger Clemens]] (yellow) and [[Darryl Strawberry]] (blue). In Japan, they were named after their colors. To illustrate the characters' sketches, Drew hired [[Gottlieb]]'s well-known pinball artist, Gordon Morison.{{Citation needed|date=April 2010}} Drew's original gameplay ideas for the video game was for a 1-player, adventure-based, [[platform game]] similar to [[Nintendo]]'s "[[Super Mario Bros.]]". However, due to the very successful game sales of several 4-player games (most of them being beat 'em ups) Drew added 3-players in an effort to compete with the 4 Players games. While the title and characters were Drew's concept, Irem Japan programmed the arcade game, and modified the look of its prototype. Drew didn't mind it being different, as he was thrilled about it being programmed by them.{{Citation needed|date=April 2010}} A year after its concept was created and a year before it was released, despite it being interesting in his opinion, Drew left the company in 1992 and moved to [[Data East|Data East USA]]. Because of that, he was unable to market nor manage any other input related to the game. Released in 1993, sales in both North America and the [[Far East]] were poor compared to other kits sold at that time. Of the 1042 units sold, only 43 units were sold in North America, making "Ninja Baseball Bat Man" quite rare (especially in the U.S.).{{Citation needed|date=April 2010}} Drew "was very disappointed with the effort by the US office."{{Citation needed|date=April 2010}} Despite all of this, the popularity of the arcade emulator created four years later in 1997 titled [[MAME]] caused ''Ninja Baseball Bat Man'' to gain more popularity than the arcade game's original release.
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