Champion Baseball

The player controls a baseball team, against a computer-controlled team, with the player batting at the top of each inning. In a two-player game, each will play independently against the computer, one inning at a time. Standard baseball rules apply, with the player awarded points for various accomplishments such as hitting a pitch, safely reaching any base, pitching a strike, getting a computer player out, or retiring the computer's side to end an inning.

Before play begins, the player can choose which city/state to represent from a list containing Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Atlanta, Pittsburg (probably a typo for Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), Chicago, Montreal, St. Louis, Boston, Milwaukee, New York City, California and Texas (all of whom had major-league baseball franchises in 1983). The computer then randomly selects from among the remaining cities.

The game was a blockbuster success upon release in Japanese arcades, at one point enjoying a level of popularity comparable to Space Invaders according to Sega. Like Space Invaders, there were many arcade locations across Japan dedicated exclusively to Champion Baseball. Sega had sold over 15,000 arcade units in Japan by early June 1983, and were expecting to ship a further 10,000 arcade units within the country by the end of June. It was Japan's highest-grossing arcade game around mid-1983.

When Japanese magazine Game Machine published their first bi-weekly arcade charts in their June 1, 1983 issue, Champion Baseball was listed as the most successful table arcade cabinet of the month. It remained at the top of the Game Machine table arcade game charts for three months through June and July to August 1983, before eventually being dethroned by Elevator Action in September. Champion Baseball remained in the top ten for the rest of the year, through December 1983.

Champion Baseball II was released the same year, with identical graphics but allowing two players to compete with each other. Game Machine listed the sequel on their October 1, 1983 issue as being the top-grossing new table arcade unit of the month. Another sequel, titled Super Champion Baseball, was released in 1989.

Upon release, the sports gameplay of Champion Baseball was a departure from the "space games" and "cartoon" action games that had previously dominated the arcades. Champion Baseball went on to serve as the prototype for later baseball video games. Nintendo, for example, later released their own competing sports game, Baseball, initially for the Famicom console in late 1983 and then ported to the arcade Nintendo VS. System as VS.