Arc Style: Baseball!! 3D is a casual baseball videogame developed and published by Arc System Works on May 15, 2014 for the Nintendo 3DS.
The game has three modes: Tournament, Exhibition and Customize. In the first, players choose a baseball team and take on the others on a 7-round tournament. In the second, players can have a quick exhibition game with and against any team of their choice, and are able to set different parameters not present in Tournament such as number of innings, ballpark and who bats first. In the Customize option, one can build their own team of 12 from scratch with the aid of several appearance parameters for every separate character. The game can hold up to 2 custom teams.
There is also a multiplayer mode for exhibition games where the host can play against one other person online or via Download Play.
Arc Style: Baseball!! 3D contains examples of:
- Action Commands: When you're fielding, the A button will often appear on screen, prompting you to press it so you catch the ball. Doing so can make your fielder do impressive, highly beneficial dives — while failing to do so means that the ball will go past your fielder, which will cost you a couple of bases given up to the runner(s). The Normal character type has an easier time catching the ball because the A button will appear sooner, giving you more reaction time. This is most useful for fielders who have to consistently deal with lots of quick line drives, such as second baseman and shortstop.
- All There in the Manual: Literally. Even though the basic controls are displayed all the time on the bottom screen during a game, crucial information regarding rules, steal mechanics and specific body build abilities are only found in the game's electronic manual.
- Amazing Technicolor Population: You can invoke this when making your own team. Just give one of your players blue skin, and you have a character out of the blue men organization from Ghost Trick.
- Amazon Brigade: Team Hamstars is entirely made of women. You can also make your own team of all female characters with the Team Customization feature.
- Artificial Brilliance: With the bases loaded, if you hit a grounder to an infielder, they will throw to the plate for the force out, and then the catcher will throw to first to attempt a double play.
- Artificial Stupidity: There are tons of silly actions the AI will take on your average baseball game:
- Man on third. If you hit a grounder to an infielder, they will most likely throw to the plate in an attempt to put out the runner coming home, note but the catcher will immediately throw to first instead of wait it out until the runner gets home and tag him out. Sometimes this will allow both the runner and the batter to be safe.
- Man on first, or men on first and second. If you hit a grounder to the shortstop, he will always throw to first instead of attempting a double play, even if his team is trailing badly and needs two outs desperately.
- Man on second. You hit the ball to the gap, and when the outfielders get the ball, instead of throwing to second base to prevent you from getting a double, they will either do nothing (if you stand still at the corner bases) or throw to home plate if you attempt to score. Of course, the distance is so big from the outfield that the throw is always for naught, and you can exploit it to get to second base with the other runner.
- While on base, the CPU runners can sometimes override the bases for no reason if you have caught a line drive and are throwing to the base the runner is retreating to. This shouldn't grant you a double play, but it does.
- CPU batters can attempt bunts when they're trailing by a lot of runs (gratuitous outs decrease the chance of scoring many runs in an inning). To make things worse, they can still do it when there's no one on base. And when they have two strikes in the count, risking a foul bunt strikeout.
- Man on third. If you hit a grounder to the first baseman, he will throw to the catcher to try and tag out the runner coming home. The catcher sometimes will start running towards first base and then throw the ball to the backstop, where there's nobody who can receive the throw. Maybe this was programmed in case the pitcher was covering the plate, but there's so little time that the pitcher can't get there soon enough.
- When you have a runner on base, he/she will sometimes try and steal the next base if the pitcher attempts a pickoff. Without you ordering him/her to do so. Good luck getting back to safety.
- Left fielders will consistently throw to first base after a hit even if there's a baserunner heading towards second base. They could get an out, but refuse to do so.
- Boring, but Practical: Curveballs and two-seams are not very flashy, but they do a decent job at making batters line, ground and strike out. You'll be using them most of the time.
- Cap: You can't score more than 99 runs. If you get another player home, the scoreboard will still display 99.
- Character Customization: The gist of the game is creating your own team of 12 players from scratch. Well, two teams, if one wasn't enough for you. The features you can change are:
- Name. It can have up to 9 letters.
- Body build: Normal (assisted fielding), Macho (high hitting power, low running speed, high pitching speed), Tall (widest array of pitches), Small (high running speed), and Girl (greater chance to make contact with a pitch).
- Skin color. You can choose among 16 colors, including green and blue.
- Hair cut. There are 16, counting both male and female. You can give a male character female hair, and viceversa.
- Hair color. There are 16.
- Eyes. There are 16 shapes, including Tsurime Eyes and Tareme Eyes.
- Eye color. Just like hair color, there are 16, so you can invoke Curtains Match the Window.
- Mouth. There are 16 shapes.
- Option. This includes a wide variety of facial complements, like Luminescent Blush, glasses, beards, moustaches, crayon on the cheeks... There are 17 of them this time.
- Option color. Not 17; there are 16 colors for the option you chose for the character. These are pretty much the same for hair and eyes.
- Handedness: batting left, throwing right; batting right, throwing left; batting right, throwing right; and batting left, throwing left. But there's more; you can even choose the throwing style of your character: overhand, underhand or sidearm. However, you'll only notice the difference in this style if your player pitches.
- Character Name Limits: Your custom characters can have a 9-letter name, but pre-created teams have names longer than that, like Rivertorrent (12 letters).
- Cherry Tapping: You can strike out batters by pitching slow balls. And we do mean slow. The better the batter is, the more satisfying it feels. Though it can backfire horribly if they get a home run with it.
- Color-Coded Multiplayer: It's baseball, so all the players of a team wear a colored uniform to easily tell the teams apart. If you play as team X and your opponent is team X too, one of you will wear the secondary uniform so you can tell who is who.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Some teams have all or nearly all their players sport a certain hair color, even wacky ones: blue for the Mackerels, purple for Rhinos and red for Mammoth.
- Combat Pragmatist: You can abuse the AI's fielding errors and stupid fielder's choices (such as throwing from left field to first base when a runner has just arrived to second and can keep on running), or the way they handle rundowns to steal all the bases you want without having to deal with a single pitch. Not to mention hitting batters in the face in order to walk them by only using one pitch instead of four.
- Cool, but Inefficient:
- It feels so good to groove the strike zone with a fastball, but half the time it's hit for a home run on Hard difficulty (and powerful teams in general, like the Crystals).
- It's awesome to nail a batter with a slow ball in the strike zone, but this can backfire by means of a home run.
- Crippling Overspecialization:
- Small players only excel at running the bases fast. The rest of their stats are worthless. Why? They don't field better unlike the Normal type, they don't hit strong, their pitches are slow and inefficient, and worst of all: their special ability in batting? It's called "Quick dash", and makes the player run faster than normal towards first base. But it's almost always a ground ball to the infielders, who will most likely put you out anyway. So you'll probably only use them to get doubles instead of singles when that tiny time gap that would put out any normal runner allows the small character ro reach second base just in time.
- Macho pitchers have faster pitches in general. But their array consists of fastball (which is ridiculously prone to be hit), slow ball (more of the same thing) and curveball. If you use one of these pitchers, you will most likely end up with a ton of hits and runs against you. Downplayed, though, because they can still bat with great strength, so they're not completely useless. But they run slow.
- Crutch Character: Macho pitchers usually deal you good results in the early stages of Tournament mode... But their fastballs are soon hit out of the park by later teams. And then you're trailing by a lot of runs.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: The first round of the Tournament mode is so easy that you will most likely beat them 20-0 or so in your first playthrough.
- Curtains Match the Window: You can easily invoke this trope by giving your player character hair and eyes of the same color.
- Custom Uniform of Sexy: Makoto Nanaya from the Arc Stars sports an outfit that exposes her tummy. No other character in this game can do this — not even your customizable players.
- Dead Character Walking: If a batter strikes out by making a foul bunt, they will continue to bat with a reset count, even if they should have left the plate already to allow the next player to bat. The out still counts, and if it was the third one in the half-inning, the inning will not end until the batter puts the ball in play (no fourth out needed).
- Defeating the Undefeatable: You can be proud of yourself if you win against the almighty Arc Stars.
- Difficulty Levels:
- Easy: The pitchers will throw nothing but slow fastballs, and fielders will be prone to making errors. Except if they're from the Arc Stars, in which case the fastballs will be smoking and there will be little to no errors. Batting performance by the CPU won't be very good as well.
- Normal: The pitchers will throw any kind of pitch, but not at their maximum speed.
- Hard: All pitches have maximum speed.
- Disc-One Final Boss: The game against Team Crystal is labeled as the final round of Tournament mode... but then there's an extra match if you defeat them.
- Fake Difficulty: AI intelligence won't improve overall if you play in a higher difficulty. Pitches will just be more varied and fast, and the amount of stupid errors will decrease. Bad fielding choices will stay the same regardless of team and difficulty.
- Final Boss: There's an extra challenge if you beat the Crystals in Torunament mode: the Arc Stars, a much more powerful team that excels in everything. You'll have to defeat them in order to complete the mode.
- Game-Favored Gender: Zig-zagged. There are four male body builds while only one female build, which allows for much greater versatility for men. These get faster pitches (if you choose a Macho pitcher); a wide, effective array of pitches (if you choose a Tall pitcher); very powerful batting (a Macho character); fast baserunning (a Small character); and assisted fielding (Normal build). Women are very good at hitting for contact, though, because they have the "Concentrate" ability, which greatly increases the chance of making contact with the ball. And female pitchers don't have a bad array of pitches, either (though not as good as the Tall males). So, overall, male characters are favored, but women are far from useless in any position.
- Girls with Moustaches: Yes... You can invoke this trope for laughs in the Team Customization option by giving your female player a moustache. Don't worry: it can be removed at any point.
- Glacier Waif: If you haven't seen or played BlazBlue, Makoto from the Arc Stars doesn't appear to be a batting threat... but she can hit as strong as a Macho player.
- Harder Than Hard: You can invoke this trope by playing with the worst team (Albatross) against the best team (Arc Stars) as a form of Self-Imposed Challenge. The name of the trope is one hell of an understatement.
- Hime Cut: One of the possible haircuts in the game is long straight hair with two symmetrical bangs hiding the eyebrows and two thin locks ending at shoulder level. Mostly used for women, but not restricted to. It can be found in pre-made characters, such as Rivertorrent (brown hair), Ray (brown as well), Irene (green hair) and Percival (purple); and you can give it to your customizable characters.
- Hitbox Dissonance:
- Infielders will somehow tag you out if you pass running by them. Behind their back. It really challenges the Willing Suspension of Disbelief.
- While pitching a forkball, you can make the ball go through the dirt or home plate, as the ball icon will disappear.
- Fielders can merge with each other and with the outfield walls.
- Jack of All Stats:
- Normal type characters are decent at everything. They are better at fielding than anything else, though: when the games prompts you to press the A button to catch a ball, the sign will appear sooner than with other characters, giving you more reaction time.
- Team Hamstars is in the middle of the spectrum both in ERA and batting average, and having all female players, so the stats are the same for everyone; they don't have any specialist for power or speed.
- Long Song, Short Scene: Inverted. The main menu music is less than 10 seconds long, yet you'll probably be selecting things for much longer, making the song loop over and over again.
- Luminescent Blush: You can invoke this trope by giving some blush (it doesn't have to be red) to a character in the Team Customization feature.
- Master of All: The Arc Stars are the best at everything: batting, baserunning, pitching and possibly fielding (since they hardly ever make errors). Playing as them will always result in a Curb-Stomp Battle, unless the CPU also plays as them.
- Mighty Glacier: Macho players run very slow, but have great batting power. In fact, only they have a batting option called "Max power" available.
- Minmaxer's Delight:
- Pitching is all about using Tall characters. They have the second fastest delivery speed and the most useful pitches by far in the game: slider, two-seam and forkball. Also, since a whole lot of batters in the game are left-handed, you might as well make your pitcher a lefty too, so you can exploit the slider on them.
- The "Max power" option is the most useful in batting, and it's only available to Macho characters. Have some of them on your team, and you'll get lots of runs. Granted, they're really slow, but you can compensate that with tons of hits to the gap or over the fence.
- Mirror Match: You can play against the same team you're playing as. To differentiate teams, one of them will wear an alternate uniform.
- Morton's Fork:
- When you line out hard to the pitcher and there is someone at first base, you'll have to decide whether to let the game handle the baserunning for you or to tag up as soon as you see the ball approaching the pitcher. What's the best choice? You never know, because if you tag up and the ball isn't caught, both runners may get out at first base; and if you don't tag up and the ball is caught, the pitcher will have an easy time throwing you out for the double play as well. However, taking the tag up attitude will save you from rundowns between second and first where your non-batter runner would otherwise get involved, so it might be a little bit wiser to retreat immediately and hope that the ball is caught and nothing else happens.
- Man on first, less than two outs. A fly ball falls behind second base or nearby. If you tag up, two things can happen: either the ball is caught, which gets the batter out and the runner safe, or the ball touches the ground, which means the batter is safe and the runner is thrown out at second base. One out, like it or not. If you decide to Take a Third Option and not tag up, you will be risking a double play at first base.
- My Rules Are Not Your Rules: Pitchers always throw faster when they are controlled by the CPU. If your average tall pitcher can throw an 85 MPH fastball at maximum, that same guy will throw the same pitch at 100 MPH when in the hands of the computer. Not only that: they have a wider array of pitches as well. This might be done on purpose to compensate for the sheer number of Artificial Stupidity instances.
- Numerical Hard: Turning up the difficulty from Normal to Hard sums up as turning up the speed of the opposing pitcher's pitches. At the very least, that's the main obvious difference.
- Oh, Crap!:
- Whenever you cause an instantaneous double play by, say, lining out to a baseman who's standing on the base to which a runner must return.
- Grounding to an infielder who suddenly and inexplicably tags out a baserunner other than the batter behind them, without turning around. Can happen in conjuction with the batter's retirement for greater effect. Especially if the non-batter runner was going home.
- When you are stealing a base and you line out to an infielder, which is pretty common. Most probably it will lead to a double play.
- One-Hit Polykill: There is more than one way to get two outs at the same time (and we mean in the same split second, instantaneously, not just in the same continuous play like any ordinary double play). For example, lining out to a baseman standing on a base to which a runner must return (tag up) after the ball is caught, or lining out to an infielder diving towards a runner.
- Only One Name: All CPU players have just one name. First or last? It depends on the player. When you customize your own, you can defy the trope by giving them a short first name and a short last name.
- Palette Swap: Every team has two differently colored uniforms. The secondary one is used in Mirror Matches.
- Purposely Overpowered: The Arc Stars are an unbelievably good team who tops every stat in the game: run speed, pitch speed and batting power. Most of them have the hitting strength of a Macho character, but without the catch of low running speed. And Noel and Jin take the pitching prowess up a notch by having 115 MPH fastballs and breaking balls 10 MPH under that. Good luck beating them.
- Readings Are Off the Scale: Played with regarding the Arc Stars' team stats. Their batting average is .999, which is plain impossible because that would mean
a hit for every at bat. On the other hand, their ERA is 9.99, which is actually pretty realistic but unimpressive for a star team. The "all nines" display, along with the "No data" description of the team, helps shroud the Arc Stars in mystery. - Save Point:
- You can make a "Quick Save" in-between half-innings in Tournament Mode and only there. Not available in Exhibition Mode, for some unknown reason. Saving this way will return you to the main menu, and if you continue and then reset the game, the save will still be there.
- There's a Save button in the Customize mode. You'll have to hit it after making any changes to your team, or else they won't be applied when you go back to the main menu. This can be exploited to avoid changing parameters back to their original values if you don't like how the changes look.
- Secret A.I. Moves: Normal and Macho pitchers controlled by the CPU can pitch two-seam fastballs, and Tall ones can pitch changeups. You don't have access to these pitches when you control them.
- Skill Gate Characters: Teams Rhinos and Crystal are pretty good overall and you won't have a hard time winning with them. But just the same, an experienced player will have an easy time taking them down by observing their pitching patterns and knowing their batting lineup.
- The Smurfette Principle: Team Wild Cats and Team Rhinos have only one female player (third basewoman Yamada and closing pitcher Percival, respectively).
- Southpaw Advantage: You can make your characters right or left handed for throwing and batting independently. This way, you can have a left-handed batter who throws the ball with his right hand, or viceversa. Or the same hand for both tasks. Left-handedness being an advantage depends on whether the opposing batters are lefties or righties.
- Stripperiffic: Makoto Nanaya from the Arc Stars wears very little clothing, just like in BlazBlue.
- Super-Deformed: All players have a big head without a nose and a small body. Proportions are exaggerated for distinction purposes and vary depending on whether a character is a normal male, a Macho, a Tall one, a Small one or a girl (which will have a thinner waist, wider thighs and a notable bust). Character Customization lets you choose one of these 5 body builds, all of which are chibi in their own way.
- This Is Gonna Suck:
- When you are the pitcher, the bases are loaded and a power hitter is at the plate. If it's the Arc Stars you're facing, brace yourself and God help you.
- When you are the offensive team, have the bases loaded and you ground out to the pitcher. Prepare for a quick double play that will prevent you from scoring.
- Two Girls to a Team: Team Albatross has two girls (Rivertorrent and Blackwell) and 10 guys.
- Unintentionally Unwinnable: Subverted in an instance where, if you hit a fly ball to right field and the right fielder dives to catch it, he/she might go inside the wall and no one will come to pick up the ball, leaving all defenders idle and stalling the game. You can get out of this glitch by driving all your runners home (an inside-the-park home run), which will trigger a cutscene and a fade to white that will get things back to normal (your next batter will step to the plate like nothing happened). Now, what could happen if you were the defense and the CPU was the offense...
- Unskilled, but Strong: Macho pitchers have very fast pitches, but they don't usually use them to great effect. They tend to throw them at the center of the strike zone, resulting in an easy time hitting the ball if you're used to the speed.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: As a pitcher, you can hit batters in the face on purpose, and no punishment will occur. Besides walking the batter, that is.
- Video Game Perversity Potential: You can swing or bunt on purpose just to stare at the ass of female batters, if you're into that.
- Virtual Paper Doll: You can change the looks of your team's uniform with four parameters. And no, you can't remove any of it.
- Wake-Up Call Boss: Fujieda and his pitching teammates from the Rhinos let you know that the game is not all about hitting slow fastballs in the center of the strike zone. The implementation of the forkball and pitching around the strike zone can really surprise you after 3 really easy games.
- Weak, but Skilled: The pitches of the tall and female pitchers don't have a whole lot of speed, but they compensate with a wide array of breaking balls that can make the CPU's life a hell.
- Would Hit a Girl: You can hit a female batter in the face with a pitch, if you want. Let's see if you feel good after seeing her hurt face complete with a scream, You Monster!
- Your Princess Is in Another Castle!: You're told that Team Crystal is the final challenge in Tournament mode... But there's one more: the Arc Stars, which is an exhibition of the company's best known characters.
- Zero-Effort Boss: The first 2 games of the Tournament mode are nearly impossible to lose because the pitchers only throw you slow fastballs to the center of the strike zone. Anyone can catch up, even if they have never played a baseball game. Even if you hit an easy catchable fly ball, the fielders will almost always make an error, saving you from an out and getting you someone on base.
Game set-oh!
