Jikkyō Powerful Pro Yakyū Series

Jikkyō Powerful Pro Yakyū Series

Jikkyō Powerful Pro Yakyū (Japanese: 実況パワフルプロ野球, Hepburn: Jikkyō Pawafuru Puro Yakyū?, lit. "Live Powerful Pro Baseball"), also known simply as Power Pro or Pawapuro to non-Japanese speakers, is a traditionally Japan-only baseball series created by Konami. It is known for its big-headed characters, and addictive arcade-style gameplay. It is long running in Japan, starting out in 1994 for the Super Famicom. The game has also appeared on the Sega Saturn (from 1995 to 1997), the PlayStation (from 1995 to 2003), the Nintendo 64 (1997 to 2001), the PlayStation 2 (from 2002 to 2009), the Dreamcast, the Nintendo GameCube (from 2002 to 2006), PlayStation 3 (since 2010) as well as the PlayStation Portable and Wii (since 2007). The series is within its 15th iteration on home consoles. It is one of the long-lasting titles in Japan with most number of game entries, like Winning Eleven/PES Series (also from Konami), Super Robot Wars Series (Banpresto), and Final Fantasy Series (Square Enix)

The series has also released a spinoff on handheld systems since 1999 under the title Power Pro-kun Pocket, with versions for the Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, and Nintendo DS. The series originally designed as being the side-story of Success mode of main series, but eventually developing on its own.

On May 12, 2006, a version of Power Pro was released featuring Major League Baseball players, under the title Jikkyō Powerful Major League (MLB Power Pros for American version). The Power Pro series has featured online play since its tenth incarnation on the PS2 and its eighth handheld version on the Nintendo DS (which utilises the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection service). 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. The game, titled MLB Power Pros, was published by 2K Sports, and features a Success Mode set within Major League Baseball.

On July 13, 2009, Konami released a version for the iPhone OS dubbed Power Pros Touch (パワフルプロ野球 Touch, lit. "Pawapuro Touch"?).

The most distinctive feature of the Power Pro series is its odd depiction of characters. The basic design of the Power Pro baseball player (collectively known as "Pawapurokun") is a short figure with an excessively wide head, lacking a mouth, nose, ears with expression being mainly in the eyebrows. Pawapurokun are somewhat similar to the character Rayman, in that they do not have legs and thus their feet are not connected to their body. Pawapurokun 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 for every single one of its games, even though improvements in graphics and gameplay have given birth to other games that feature almost lifelike images of baseball players. It is impossible to distinguish one player from the other wthin Power Pro, except due to their jersey. All Pawapurokuns basically look exactly the same, except for some variations in skin color and behavior.