Video Game / Power Pro-kun Pocket 9

The One With a Handsome, Ex-sentai Baseball Hobo.

Power Pro-kun Pocket 9 is a 2006 Baseball simulator + dating sim + card game + turn based RPG developed by Pawapuro Production, formerly Diamond Head, and published by Konami for the Nintendo DS.

The game lets players choose the Card Baseball mode from Pawapoke Dash for the Outer Success mode in place of the standard gameplay and adds a short "Mini Success" story mode with quick time event mechanics on the touch screen.

Outer Success Mode: Vagabond Nice Guy Edition

In Tonoe Town, not only is the local Victorys baseball team under bad times but the Boogie Woogie commercial district that sponsors them is being sabotaged by a supermarket chain owned by the corrupt Judgement corporation. Their hope lies in the arrival of a kind-hearted tough and cool vagabond who drafts himself into the Victorys to help raise publicity for the BW district.

Inner Success Mode: Space Captain Edition

A space captain has 250 days to collect 50 tons worth of Space Vaccine in a time of war and economic crisis in the galaxy.

On top of the turn-based RPG mechanics, the story also involves third-person space shooter gameplay.

Mini Success Mode: Shōshin Temple Edition

A ballplayer is invited by a friend to train at the Komori Temple (小森寺) but by mistake enters the Shōshin Temple (少森寺) where the fighters inside force him to spend his 40-days vacation under grueling Shaolin training.

This story mode can be shared to another Nintendo DS, but the player without the complete game won't be able to record custom characters.

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This game features the following tropes:

• Anti-Frustration Features:
  • The flea-clicking minigame is rather difficult, but failing it during the main story results in no penalties other than a wasted turn. You can try it out multiple times and get a prize every time you win.
  • The games now allow the player to access the stat-building menu before each Baseball match.
  • Drawing the match at the mid-point of Vagabond Nice Guy causes the story to reset back to it with a minor penalty after some scenes play. Drawing any match after that one results in a game over, though.
• Bait-and-Switch: Every Pawapoke game since 4 has a gag where the protagonist listens to a tutorial speech from someone who then explodes, revealing the scene to be just a dream. In this game, the protagonist is the one who explodes and the one who he was lecturing is the dreamer. The usual scene plays out afterwards, though.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: One minigame involves blocking a swarm of cockroaches from invading a room. The final boss for Vagabond Nice Guy is a variation where Hero 9 must instead kill a giant centipede.
• Blown Across the Room: In the Platform Fighter minigame, each character has an attack which deals heavy knockback to foes. Landing either that or the throw are required to finish an opponent who's at 0 HP.
• The Cameo:
  • There's a chance of meeting Daisuke Bonda from the second and fifth games in a string of events during Vagabond Nice Guy.
  • Fukiko Shirase is seen eating at the curry shop in one random scene, while also watching the Hoppers play.
• Canon Character All Along: It is heavily implied that the titular Vagabond Nice Guy is Pokeranger Red, the antagonist from Pawapoke 7:
  • Variants of "tough and cool nice guy" are adjectives given only to both Red and Hero 9.
  • When Hero 9 joins the Victorys, Gonda gives him the same piece of training advice Hero 7 once gave to Red.
  • Hero 9 is surprised to hear Yuda has become a professional ballplayer and also displays suspicious familiarity with other characters from 7 such as Director Sawada and the crab monster.
  • When Takemi is revealed to be an android, she's disappointed that Hero 9 isn't the same kind of person as her. Hero 9 declares he sympathizes with her woes of being a "fake" person, and that it's just his origins that are different.
  • When told to ad-lib some character for a theater play, Hero 9 flat-out declares himself a Henshin Hero.
  • Finally, in Power Pro-kun Pocket 14, Red appears in the Boogie Woogie district and claims he was involved in the events of Vagabond Nice Guy.
• Continuing is Painful: You get infinite continues, but every time you fail the story or reset you get a penalty. From the second failure on, the game starts chopping your core stats until they go below base values. At this point it basically ruins the playthrough. Also, giving up upon losing the final boss fights brings the "終" screen and erases the save file.
• Cutting Off the Branches: Years later in 14, most of the Boogie Woogie district went out of business. Pocket Hero Red, who is largely implied to be Hero 9, says that after beating the King Cobras he left the town for ten years and had been happy "until recently". Most other details are left vague.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: In the original version of Card Baseball, you had to get green and orange results in the roulette as the batter and blue ones as the pitcher. This game changes it so you always have to get the green and orange slots.
• Dark Reprise: Hero 9's theme song from the opening scene also plays on the tragic endings.
• Easter Egg: Touching and holding either the top-left or the bottom-left corner of the screen on the minigame screen runs the pachinko minigame.
• Evil Counterpart: The Judgement group has their own Baseball Hobo and other oddball people to match the weirdoes in the Boogie Woogie Victories team.
• Featureless Protagonist: Basically averted with Hero 9, who looks pretty unique compared to other Power Pro protagonists. He wears a brown cloak and hat and has Perma-Stubble to indicate he's unkempt and/or at least over his twenties.
• Feel No Pain: Downplayed. When the Banzai meter is filled enough, you can spend it for up to 10 turns in which you can train with an experience boost. This makes Hero 9 able to train even if he's currently injured, but the usual chance of failure training sessions have still applies. Once the adrenaline boost is over, the motivation gauge drops and several penalties are added if any injury happened.
• Formula-Breaking Episode: Space Captain is a sci-fi RPG with space shooter sections that barely has anything to do with Baseball, and stars a different protagonist and a cast of alternate universe versions of characters from previous games. You do get a "Baseball Doll" to build, and that is what becomes a custom character once the story is cleared.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Track 68 in the Sound Test can never be unlocked because it is a Cut Song.
• Gameplay and Story Segregation:
  • Story-wise Hero 9 is really tough and has no trouble convincing people to let a random hobo join the local team, but gameplay-wise he starts with mediocre stats like any other Power Pro-kun and can spend a good chunk of a playthrough afflicted with the injury status.
  • The Punch De Punch minigame depicts the protagonist as a generic Power Pro-kun with a blank cap, but when the minigame appears in the story, he's wearing his brown hat and a cape.
• Golden Ending: If Vagabond Nice Guy is cleared with Natsuki's good ending, the Boogie Woogie shopping district is able to coexist with the Judgement Supermarket, and the story of the baseball weirdoes who made it happen is passed down for a long time.
• Gratuitous English:
  • The "Nice Guy" in Vagabond Nice Guy is written as "ナイスガイ" (naisugai), drawing a parallel between the mysterious protagonist and Red from Pawapoke 7, who is only other character who's called that.
  • The "Victories" in Boogie Woogie Victories is spelled as "Victorys" in-game.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language: In one dating scene with Takemi, Funny Foreigner Albert and her talk in Portuguese for no apparent reason.
• Hello, [Insert Name Here]: On either story, you must set up things like the character's name, position on the team, dominant hand, posture, which stat starts with a bonus and which mechanics on the Baseball simulator will be automated.
• Hitbox Dissonance: In the flea-clicking minigame, the targets are dot-sized, but your clicks have an area of effect that allows you to hit several fleas at once. This only makes the minigame barely beatable, though.
• Hobos: The titular Vagabond Nice Guy is a travelling hobo who sets a tent by the river in Tonoe Town.
• It's a Wonderful Failure:
  • The game over screen for losing a match past the midpoint of the main story shows Hero 9 ashamed of his failure and stating he'll never be able to show his face in Tonoe Town again.
  • Losing the final boss fights yields no special illustrations, but failing the second one treats you to a brief text-only scene where everyone involved gets gruesomely killed by giant insects. Then the "終" screen comes up to erase your save file.
  • In Takemi's bad ending, Hero 9 fails to remove the self-destruction device from her body and she insists he leaves her to die alone. The epilogue scene shows Hero 9 walking away in disgrace as he hears the explosion behind him. Naturally, Takemi will always die offscreen if you take another route through the story, and she is never seen again in later games anyway.
  • The Pennant game over is the protagonist lying on a pile of garbage again, and it's also raining!
• Jump Scare: If you fail the flea-clicking minigame, the cat on the screen wakes up with a scary face and growls loudly.
• Killed Offscreen: Takemi disappears from the story in most endings, as she wanders off to explode without anyone knowing. If you date Takemi, find out about her identity and fail to rid her of the time bomb, she refuses to let the protagonist witness her death.
• Leitmotif: Hero 9 is associated with the western-esque theme in his story's opening and with "Song of a Vagrant", the theme for the second half of the story.
• Limit Break: Various events will raise the Banzai gauge. It can be spent for up to 10 turns of enhanced training.
• Luck-Based Mission:
  • A lot of the difficulty in the main story is from how likely it is to get the Injury status from bad decisions or random events. When injured you can't train for several turns.
  • When the icon for the training camp location in Vagabond Nice Guy displays a question mark, it either enables a event with a random teammate or one in which the protagonist gets injured. It's better to avoid it.
  • The pachinko minigame will sometimes spawn the Horuhisu Doll and the Cursed Doll. The first one awards the golden bat item, which increases exp points for strength training. The latter one, which can show up in other events, enables things such as a scene that causes the protagonist to get sick between turns.
  • The galaxy in Space Captain is randomly arranged on each playthough. This drastically affects the story's difficulty.
• The Mole: Natsume is really a reluctant spy of the Judgment Supermarket.
• Mysterious Past: Hero 9 has an unknown background even he is unaware of, or so he says.
• Mythology Gag: In the Platform Fighter minigame, Hero 9 uses a towel to whack enemies away. His Limit Break is throwing three bombs, which seems random but is actually the go-to tactic to win fights in the RPG modes from previous Pawapoke games.
• New Game Plus:
  • From the second playthrough of the Outer Success scenario onwards, you can use points to purchase up to three starting items. Natsuki's route can also be enabled in exchange for points.
  • You can enter custom characters in My Pennant mode to play a year-long season. From this game on, there is a second loop in this mode if you can achieve a high enough salary. The random events and dialogue present in previous My Pennants have also been forever scrapped.
  • The Arena Shooter and platform fighter minigames in Vagabond Nice Guy become more difficult after the story is cleared once, but they'll turn to normal if the player got a game over or a reset penalty beforehand.
• Nice Guy: It's in the title for the Outer Success. Hero 9 is characterized as kinder than the usual Pawapoke everyman.
• Power-Up Letdown: The Banzai powerup is necessary for raising a strong character, but you have to figure out how to fit it in your schedule so you can use all available turns in a row without neglecting any questlines. And if a training session happens to fail while Banzai is active, there will be severe penalties once it ends.
• Quick Time Event: In Shōshin Temple, the martial artists must be fought in quick time events via the touch screen.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: A Handsome Hobo, a swimmer, a clown, a samurai and a crab monster are the Boogie Woogie Victories's star players. Too bad the gameplay engine still depicts everyone as a basic Power Pro-kun.
• Scarf of Asskicking: Hero 9 wears a yellow scarf, just like Ranger Red back in 7...
• Sequential Boss: After the King Cobras match, the Big Bad attempts to unleash a giant centipede on the city. The player must then clear the platform fighter and Arena Shooter minigames in a row. However, compared to previous final bosses in the series those are pretty easy. The game also uncharacteristically gives a chance to suspend-save between the final match and the final bosses.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Kanta looks much like a Glasses Clan member but isn't actually related to them.
• This Is a Work of Fiction: The Inner Success in this installment is the first one with such a disclaimer, likely due to the political corruption themes.
• Unexpected Gameplay Change: Before the player's brain can adjust to the existence of a turn-based sci-fi RPG in a sports game, Space Captain hands out the tutorial for the 360º spaceship battles.
• Unkempt Beauty: Hero 9 is a hobo with a "Handsomeness Meter". Filling it up reveals him to be a Bishōnen and affects relationships with other characters. It will also reduce chances of sickness at high values and grant an experience boost if the gauge is completely filled once.
• Walk the Earth: Hero 9 wanders around Japan with a tent and a fishing rod. Some endings have him settling down and other have him leaving, with varying consequences. 14 heavily implies him leaving Tonoe Town is canon.

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