Ninja Baseball Bat Man (1993, Arcade) by Irem

Current 4P Co-op Leaderboard (speedrun.com)

This was a game I had no idea how I was going to run. I suppose MAME was the option here (and is currently the go-to if any other Arcade games in the Trials come up and I don’t have access to a machine), but then SGDQ 2019 happened. I had gone for many reasons, not the least of which was to perform commentary alongside my good friend LoZCardsfan23 for the Jameviler vs fcoughlin Zelda 1 Randomizer race (which was amazing and you should definitely check out here.

While there, I wandered into the arcade, and that’s when I saw it: an actual real Ninja Baseball Bat Man arcade machine.

I couldn’t pass this opportunity up: I grabbed 3 of my Zelda buddies, Rooslugs, MrCab55, and Eunos, and we just did it. This was not a true Trial in the sense that we didn’t actually “learn” the speedrun. But again, this just felt right: real hardware in a special setting with friends. How could I have resisted this?

The run went well enough, except my jump button didn’t work right! But we did well, beat the game with the WR on the SRC boards, and moved on. If I’m being quite honest, there’s not much to say about this game: other than the nice graphics, it’s a standard beat-em-up with a silly name and concept, and that’s about it. The game is mediocre at best if I’m honest, especially for 1993; there were much better choices for your quarter at the arcade by then. And there’s certainly better choices for your speedruns, as well.