Pro Yakyuu Nettou Puzzle Stadium

Baseball is one of the most popular sports in Japan. It was introduced to Japan in 1872 by Horace Wilson, who taught at the Kaisei School in Tokyo. The first baseball team was called the Shimbashi Athletic Club and was established in 1878. Baseball has been a popular sport ever since. It is called yakyu in Japanese, combining the characters for field and ball. The professional baseball association is called Nippon Professional Baseball. Japan has two leagues, as in the United States. The Central and Pacific Leagues each consist of six teams. The Pacific League uses the designated hitter style of play. The pro baseball season is eight months long with games beginning in April, and a Championship held in October. Teams play 144 games, as compared to the 162 games of the American major league teams. Corporations with interests outside baseball own the teams. Historically, teams have been identified with their owners, not where the team is based. However, in recent years, many owners have chosen to include a place name in the names of their teams; seven of the 12 NPB teams are currently named with both corporate and place names. Maruha Corporation has taken this one step farther by completely dropping its name from its NPB team, the Yokohama BayStars. Pro yakyuu Nettou Puzzle Stadium is the Playstation version of a game that was first released for the SNES console. The gameplay is the usual in the 2d puzzle games make combinations or join puzzle pieces of the same colour to make them dissapear and sometimes makes an attack to the opponent. The game uses the team of the Pro Yakyuu series and uses the baseball theme.