History of RBI

[Gantry]

I'm in the process of making the RBI Baseball page on the Wikipedia and just did the initial draft of the history section.  For those of you who do not know the Wikipedia, it is a user-submitted, completely open online encyclopedia.  In two years it will be one of the 10 most important sites on the net.   Anyways, here it is let me know of any corrections that need to be made.  Also correct any grammar or spelling, as I'm not much of a writer.  If anything is confusing, also let me know.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RBI_Baseball

[Felonious Gunk]

Bravo, Gantry!

I must thank you for mentioning Wikipedia before.  In my public speaking class, I was somewhat stumped on a place to look for my topic.  It was a random inspiration, but I remembered you mentioning the place.  I used it as one of my sources, and managed to get a 90% on my speech.

And nobody thinks they'll learn anything from Dee-Nee

[Gantry]

Glad to help, I have been completely addicted to the Wikipedia since I signed up for editing pages.   I'm all over the place with edits and pages, quite exciting.   Made pages so far for RBI, Ruby Dee and the Districts of Sierra Leone.   It is growing so fast and IMHO is most exciting Internet community project of all-time...

[JoeDirt]

It is growing so fast and IMHO is most exciting Internet community project of all-time...

...more exciting than project RBI online?    

[fknmclane]

Nicely done, Gantry.

I didn't realize Wikipedia was constructed all by users.  That's pretty crazy. There's tons of good shit on there.

[Gantry]

The entire project is completely open, anybody can edit any article (except a select few).  The organization and administration is tremendous, it's run better than 99% of the businesses out there...

Also made some edits to the Ghana Empire, Scott Norwood, Tengen and Operation Ivy pages.   And this was all pretty much done in the last two days, I can't stop...

[fknmclane]

Checking the OpIvy page now...

...and it's solid.  Lemme guess.  D4 and Naked Raygun are next?

[Gantry]

I actually didn't write most of that, just edited some obivous linking mistakes and the like.  A NR & D4 page are great ideas, should get around to that.  Finishing the RBI page is a top priority for now, hopefully will do one section a day...

[Gantry]

Do you guys think the sentence about the MLB license shouldn't be in the history section?  I think it might be a bit out of place...

The next section will likely be Teams and Rosters, perhaps I should put it there instead.  Thoughts?

[fightonusc]

Actually, I think the fact that it was the first game with an MLB license is exactly what gives it some historical significance for those who aren't RBI nutjobs like us.

On a related note, Peter Lipson seems to now be programming at ToysForBob, which has put out a few average at bset Disney games for PC and Playstation. Interestingly, his bio mentions programming for several games, including the coin-op version of "Relief Pitcher", but not for RBI Baseball.

[BeefMaster]

I just finally got around to reading the entry.  One correction I can see: The license for RBI was from the MLBPA (Major League Baseball Players' Association), not MLB, hence no logos or team names apart from city.  RBI 2 and 3 also had MLBPA licenses but not MLB ones.  I suspect that Major League Baseball may have had an exclusive license at that time (although it had no MLBPA license; same with the Ken Griffey games on the SNES).

I also wonder whether the history section may read better in past tense rather than present tense, although I haven't read through enough of Wikipedia to know what the standard for that type of entry is.

[JoeDirt]

I'm just curious...what role did Lipson play in creating RBI?  And how did we come up with his name in the first place?

[TβG]

and who are "kissie, dechi, hie, and kun chan"

[Gantry]

Good stuff here, lets take it from the top:

fightonusc - I intend to email Peter (I've done it before in the past, he's a very nice guy) when I'm all done to make sure everything is kosher.  I suspect that he didn't list RBI because he had enough accomplishments and it was a port...

One correction I can see: The license for RBI was from the MLBPA (Major League Baseball Players' Association), not MLB, hence no logos or team names apart from city.  RBI 2 and 3 also had MLBPA licenses but not MLB ones.  I suspect that Major League Baseball may have had an exclusive license at that time

Interesting...   So is the MLBPA license the reason RBI has real players?  Major League Baseball had no player names, just their jersey numbers.  Is this because they didn't have an MLBPA license?  

I'm just curious...what role did Lipson play in creating RBI?  And how did we come up with his name in the first place?

Lipson was the sole person responsible for RBI, if I remember correctly.  He pretty much took Family Stadium and ported (converted the game code from Famicom/Japanese to NES/English) it over.  Because most of the work was done on the Japanese side, he didn't have to do a ton of original programming.  Though obviously he did code unique aspects, such as BOPs...

I got Lipson's name from the RBI Programmer's cheat:



And noticed Peter Lipson was the only real name on that list.  Googled and found his Toys for Bob email and dropped him a line.  Probably emailed him 10 or so times, but haven't done it in a couple years...

[Gantry]

and who are "kissie, dechi, hie, and kun chan"

I'm not positive, but a good guess would be the nicknames of the Japanese programmers for Family Stadium.  I belive Peter told me that he visited the programmers of FS out in Japan, so he probably threw their names in out of respect.  Pure speculation on my part though...

[BeefMaster]

Interesting...  So is the MLBPA license the reason RBI has real players?  Major League Baseball had no player names, just their jersey numbers.  Is this because they didn't have an MLBPA license?

Correct.  MLBPA handles all player rights, while MLB is responsible for licensing team logos and nicknames.  As far as I know, the first game to actually get both MLB and MLBPA licenses was the first Griffey game on the N64, unless Tecmo Super Baseball on the SNES had them.  It's now standard to get both licenses, but it used to be pretty rare.

I believe the first game in any sport to have both league and players' association licenses was Tecmo Super Bowl.  The original Tecmo Bowl didn't have an NFL license, which is why the teams have weird logos, and I'm not sure any NBA games existed at that time.

[fightonusc]

Have you ever asked Peter about how the stats were decided for the players, or who decided which players to use for the All-Star teams, etc.? Is he a baseball fan at all, or just a code warrior who had the assignment of porting this baseball game?

[Gantry]

Great info Beef, I'll change the Wikipedia entry in 15 minutes or so.   Do you know if RBI was the first game in any genre to use player licenses?  Did RBI predate Tecmo?  

Release date for Major League Baseball would also be nice if anyone knows it.  I think GameFAQs might have it...

Have you ever asked Peter about how the stats were decided for the players, or who decided which players to use for the All-Star teams, etc.? Is he a baseball fan at all, or just a code warrior who had the assignment of porting this baseball game?

We discussed the teams and baseball a little bit, but I don't remember anything concrete.   I was doing my absolute best to not bother him too much with questions.   Perhaps he'd be down for an email interview where the forum comes up with 5-10 questions to ask him, ala Slashdot...

[BeefMaster]

I couldn't find a release date for Major League Baseball, and the stats appear to be made-up.  I'd guess that it's from the late 80's, though, as the Twins have players whose numbers correspond to Hrbek, Puckett, and Gaetti, all with lots of homers.

To my knowledge, RBI was the first game to have a players' association license.  Tecmo Bowl was released for the NES in 1989, and the arcade version was released in 1987, according to what I've managed to find so far.  I don't think the arcade version had actual NFL players; I'll check on MAME when I get home.  The only other possibility would be that a computer game had them before then; I didn't play many sports games on computers growing up, so I don't know what was out there.

[Gantry]

I changed the history page to say MLBPA license instead of MLB.  Let me know about Tecmo, at the very least I can say "first console game" - shit I had no idea that Tecmo had an arcade version...

I think the next section should be Major League Baseball Licensing where I can explain the type of license and its impact on RBI.  I can also differentiate it from Major League Baseball's license to clarify.