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Let's play baseball!: MLB Power Pros

Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball is a series of Japanese baseball arcade-simulation games published by Konami and developed by Powerpro Production (previously known as Diamond Head) ever since 1994. It is one of the most long running sport series with a lot of spinoffs in Japan, though English-speaking countries tend to know the series by its Americanized spinoff series MLB Power Pros.

The series is known for its unique character designs. They're short, small, have a big head, no nose, no mouth and no legs. Another feature the series is famous for is the unique "Success Mode", which is a game mode where you create your own character, advance through a story mode, develop his baseball stats and finally get to use the character freely after you've completed the Success Mode. Two of four MLB Power Pros series are the only of series that have been translated into English from the results that Japanese baseball players were able to MLB league, thus the proper licensing and uses of the Major League Baseball elements. The rest of the series is associated with the Nippon Professional Baseball league (NPB), resulting in no localization outside Japan.

Since 1999 a sister series called Powerful Pro-kun Pocket was developed for Nintendo's portable systems. It lasted until 2014 after 14 main installments and a spinoff. Its stories were darker and more fantasy-oriented, especially in the case of its alternate "Inner Success" story modes, which frequently had little to do with Baseball and featured turn-based RPG mechanics.

It has appeared in two Konami crossovers, Konami Krazy Racers and DreamMix TV World Fighters. Since 2020, with Konami entering e-Sports scene, eBaseball has been one of Konami's flagship E-Sports titles alongside eFootball Winning Eleven / Pro Evolution Soccer (though eBaseball does not have a PC version unlike Konami's other e-Sports titles).

In 2023, after so long since the MLB Power Pros entries, Konami suddenly released WBSC eBASEBALL: Power Pros to Western audiences in partnership with the World Baseball Softball Confederation. It is a heavily stripped down version of the typical Power Pros game containing only the baseball simulator and focused on online matches, but is sold for only a dollar.

    open/close all folders 

    List of main Powerful Pro games 

    List of Power Pro Pocket games 

    Major League Baseball games 
  • Jikkyou Powerful Major League (PlayStation 2, Nintendo Game Cube, 2006)
  • MLB Power Pros (Nintendo Wii, Nintendo Game Cube, 2007)
  • MLB Power Pros 2008 (Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 2, Nintendo DS (a butchered version of Pawapoke 10, NOT a port), 2008)
  • Jikkyou Powerful Major League 2009 (Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 2, 2009)

    Spinoff games 

The trope used in this series are:

  • Abhorrent Admirer: Norika Arai in Pawapoke 1 and 2. An odd middle-aged woman who falls in love with the original Power Pro and canonically drags him into marriage with some help from her brothers. After his death, she can end up marrying the second Pro as well but this thankfully isn't canon.
  • The Ace: No doubt, you have to become one.
  • A.I. Breaker: When you're checking out your hand as the batter in Pawapoke Dash and your best card only matches all but one of the opponent's, going for a card that matches that missing spot works most of the time.
  • All There in the Manual: Pawapoke Dash includes summaries and character profiles for every previous Pocket game, though a lot of the story is still left unclear.
  • Amnesiac Hero: The hero from Pawapoke 1 is revived as a cyborg with no memories in 3. Filling his Memory gauge to over 80% by encountering people from his past and visiting his old school is required to get past the third year of the story.
  • And I Must Scream:
    • If you lose a tournament in Pawapoke 3 Kameda leaves Power Pro locked inside a small container until he dies. If the story ends in a duel between the two and you lose, Kameda puts Pro on a leash and enslaves him.
    • If you rebel against the Pocket Heroes in Pawapoke 7 and lose, they beat up your entire team and imprison everyone inside a grotesque crayon scribble forever.
  • And Then John Was a Zombie: The second worst ending in Toshien Hero Edition from Pawapoke 7 has the protagonist get brainwashed and join the Pocket Heroes' ranks as Red's right-hand man.
  • Angry Eyebrows: For the first six years, Power Pro always had a cutesy neutral expression in boxarts. Then in Power Pro 7 he suddenly got all intense and that has rarely ever stopped since.
  • Anime Theme Song: Since Power Pro 8, nearly main installment has an animated opening with a theme song. Conversely, even the last Power Pocket games for the DS only have simple silent title screens.
  • Announcer Chatter: This was among Konami's "Jikkyou" (Live) sports series where voiced commentary was a selling point. The Pocket sister series missed out until the Nintendo DS installments.
  • Art-Style Dissonance: The games have cutesy chibi artwork, but several of them have serious stories.
  • Artifact Title: This was the only Konami sports series that kept the Jikkyou on the title long after technology allowed Announcer Chatter to become the norm in the genre. It finally changed to eBaseball Powerful Pro Yakyuu in the 2020s as Konami started getting into online sports.
  • Awesome, but Impractical: Every so often in a success run, you will run into Dr. Daijōbu who offers to perform a experimental surgery on you. The reward for a successful surgery might seem tempting, but the penalty for a failed surgery is devastating and can ruin a success run.
  • Back from the Dead:
    • Kameda from Pawapoke 1 dies in an explosion and is Reforged into a Minion. He turns back into a plain human later.
    • Power Pro #1 dies by accidentally falling off a cliff but Kameda revives him as a cheap cyborg. He also goes back to human form by the end of Pawapoke 3.
    • The "Ball Father" from Pawapoke Dash is only brought back as a ghost with a halo over his head after the Hell Dungeon story but later shows up fully alive and well in 14 via Unexplained Recovery.
  • Beef Gate: You need to be strong enough to get drafted into a professional team. Team owners will also sack you if you don't perform well. And don't even bother entering an overly weak character in Pennant mode — the CPU won't let you do anything.
  • Big Brother Instinct: After Suzumu was hosptlized due to a "traffic accident", Mamoru was determined to win the Koshien. In a match between his school(AKATSUKI UNIVERSITY HIGH SCHOOL) and Extreme High School, his team wins by a staggering 10-0. Considering Mamoru's role as a pitcher, that means he nullified eveny assult from Extreme High School.
  • Bittersweet Ending:
    • Pawapoke 1: Borders on a Downer Ending. The protagonist leads his team to victory but his friend Kameda dies and he ends up in an unhappy marriage with Norika. His own subsequent offscreen death and resurrection as a cyborg becomes the story of the third game.
    • Pawapoke 6: The protagonist is sent from the future to prevent the bankruptcy of the Wakura factory, but he falls to the Great Empire Killers team without even encountering the time criminal responsible. After 100 days working under threat of death in a concentration camp to pay off his debts, the protagonist defeats the Great Empire Killers in a rematch and manages to stir a revolt in the Blood Butterfly army. Upon destroying Mecha Kameda, however, it turns out the entire incident was the villain's twisted attempt to have a purpose in life. His second-in-command Helga is sentenced to death by firing squad for her organization's actions, and has no regrets for all the human experiments they had performed. The protagonist is left in a mix of pity and contempt for them, but moves on and begins to rebuild the Wakura factory.
    • Pawapoke Dash: The protagonist leads his team to victory, but finds his father's ghost passed away just before the final match. Still, he accepts that and makes peace with his uncle who accidentally killed his father back in the day. Girlfriend candidates Igumori and Sakura have no real happy ending to be achieved, either. However, the second Success mode for this game ends on a happier note by letting the protagonist bring his parents back from the underworld.
  • Bold Inflation: When your stats get changed in a given scene or you get new skills, blue text marks positive bonuses and red marks penalties. Those come with unique sound effects as well (such as Losing Horns for negative "skills") so you can have an idea of what happened even if you can't read the japanese installments.
  • Bonus Feature Failure: A common unlockable in the Pocket games allows you to swap the title screen to one featuring the local Yabe lookalike for one power point, but the illustrations featuring them often suck in comparison to the default ones featuring the Power Pros.
  • Bookends:
    • Taisho Adventure in the last Pawapoke for the GBA (7) revisits the inventory mechanics from the first (3), among other things. The Dash spinoff released after 8 then reused the quick time event duel that was featured in the final battle of 3.
    • The theme that plays during the end of Pawapoke Dash is a short reprise of the first main theme the game uses.
    • The trailer for Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball 2014 begins with a batter hitting a home run. The camera then zooms into a very young Pawapuro-kun, who then manages to catch the ball. At the end of the trailer, Pawapuro-kun manages to hit a home run, the camera then zooms into a kid with a baseball glove...
    • Pawapoke 14 opens with the monochrome title screen from the first game in the series, which shows Pawapuro-kun running towards the screen. Pawapuro-kun then comes closer and becomes colored. The credits for this finale's Success mode also display the title screens of every previous installment.
  • Brother–Sister Incest: One girlfriend candidate in Pawapoke Dash turns out to be the protagonist's lost sister. No outcome has them hooking up, but the protagonist realizing the truth is the worst: he hides it and puts on a Jerkass front to force a break-up. The epilogue then shows her heartbroken and swearing to become a different person.
  • But Now I Must Go:
    • The hero of Pawapoke 6 can choose to return to the future at the end of the main story. The game treats this as a game over but shows any available epilogues and gives you points anyway.
    • The hero of Pawapoke 9 can decide to keep wandering the world at the end, which angers the kid he's been helping through the story. Depending of the events followed in the story this can have other good or bad consequences. He can end up abandoning a love interest and the boy who idolizes him, for example.
  • Butt-Monkey: Marvin and Yabe by default. The main character also tend to have a fair share of bad lucks and cartoon injuries.
  • Career-Ending Injury: Pawapoke 7 has a Risk meter that fills when Power Pro gets injured in events or overexerts himself with heavy training. If it becomes full, Pro is forbidden from playing Baseball and the story draws to a close.
  • Cast from Money: In Taisho Adventure you can inexplicably buy items mid-fight to heal and deal guaranteed damage to enemies, but each item costs twice the normal price.
  • Cast of Snowflakes: Almost every major character in a Success Mode has very unique heads. The new generation of the series is also almost on par with Mii when it comes to character customization.
  • Chest Monster: Those appear in the RPG mode for Pawapoke Dash. The only way to detect them is by hitting chests with arrows, but arrows and the swords needed to fire them are precious resources.
  • Chew Toy: Marvin. With a right card, you can drag him into your affairs for comedic results.
  • Clap Your Hands If You Believe: The Pocket Rangers in Pawapoke 7 are supernatural beings born out of the protagonist's desperation to become the ultimate baseball player. Ranger Black/Mao is the most human-like among them because she isn't instilled with an obssession for victory and power. She becomes a normal person by the end of the story.
  • Cloudcuckoolander: A lot of characters are comically insane.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: When a roulette is spun in Pawapoke Dash, landing on a Blue slot gives positive outcomes for the pitcher. Green and Orange generally have positive outcomes for the batter, but depending on the trajectory of the ball some will still result in a lot of blue slots in the final spin. Take notice that in the DS installments they mixed up the colors for some reason and you instead have to get orange slots when playing as the pitcher.
  • Coming of Age Story: The protagonist of Pawapoke Dash is one of the youngest in the series. The game's plot is not without lighthearted moments but is largely about him maturing and coming to terms with the death of his parents. And possibly the death of a girl he had a crush on.
  • Companion Cube:
    • In Pawapoke Dash, the protagonist carries around a baseball that contains the soul of his father. He's not really Invisible to Normals, but the boy avoid drawing attention to him until everyone demands he explain what's going on.
    • Also in Dash, Momoko is the personification of a tree who can't leave her surroundings and that only the protagonist and his poltergeist dad can see and talk to.
  • Company Cross References:
    • The Goryukaku High School scenario in 2018 involves a legendary tree where couples confess to each other.
    • The Power Pro-kun Pocket games had multiple minigames that referenced other Konami series, such as Gradius, Ganbare Goemon and Contra.
  • Continuing is Painful: Until Pawapoke 7, a Game Over was just that. It then became the same as a Reset, setting your save file back up to 4 times. Each attempt comes with an increasingly large penalty to your stats and, at worst, your playthrough might be in an Unwinnable state anyway. Once you run out of continues, the game displays a The End message (in blood-red over a silent black background) and deletes your save file.
    • In Pawapoke Dash's RPG mode, the stairs to floors 26+ can only be opened once. If you use a continue at those depths, you'll have to just end your run on the normal ending at floor 25.
  • Continuity Nod: Several connections are established between Pawapoke games, such as the Pawapoke Dash spinoff being linked to all previous Pocket games. The series actually started out as a side story to Power Pro 5, but this is largely ignored since then.
  • Critical Annoyance: During the RPG mode in Pawapoke Dash, a tense theme plays whenever Power Pro's health gets low.
  • Crossover:
    • Besides the two Konami games above, some of the series' characters note  characters made an collaboration appearance in The Battle Cats as obtainable units, of all things.
    • To return the favour, a usable character is added into Live Powerful Pro Baseball Mobile called "Power nyan〜", which is a genderless character with a body of a power pro and a head of a cat.
    • You can summon Pawapuro-kun in the Japanese versions of Scribblenauts and Super Scribblenauts.
    • Power Pro can cosplay as Mario in Jikkyou Powerful Pro Baseball Heroes. The costume comes with its own animations, sounds and fire-themed skills.
  • Cute Sports Club Manager: Usually a love interest.
  • Cutting Off the Branches: Each game has some kind of canon outcome, but a lot of happenings are left just implied or never really resolved from game to game.
    • The canon ending of Pawapoke 1 is getting married to Norika after winning at Toshien. Kameda dies during the attack on Team Propeller's base.
    • Fighting Kameda at the end of Pawapoke 3 is canon, but later installments in the series seem to imply that things turned out in ways that can't happen in the game proper.
    • Pretty much the entire plot of Pawapoke 6 doesn't matter because the game over outcome from losing tournaments is canon and the protagonist is sent off to a heavy labor camp. The Happiness Island mode in the same game then continues the story and defeating Mecha Kameda is its canon outcome.
  • Damn You, Muscle Memory!:
    • When the Pawapoke series migrated to the Nintendo DS, they remapped some of the actions. The cursor for the batter also changes to the one from the Power Pro series from 9 on.
    • The card battle mode from Dash appears from Pawapoke 9 and onwards, but there are changes to the rules and the significance of colors in the roulette is mixed up from what it used to be.
  • Darker and Edgier:
    • Success modes labeled as hard mode tends to have darker plots than others. MLB Power Pros 2009's plots and characters are more dramatic than the previous translated title.
    • Powerful Pro-kun Pocket games have more serious story lines than the main series despite the already cartoonish art style being more crude.
      • The original one involves a criminal Baseball organization and sets a standard. Make the wrong choices and you'll see the protagonist mourning before certain graves at the end of the story. Then the sequels went and made Kameda's death and the protagonist's forced marriage to Norika canon.
      • The Cyborg story from Powerful Pro-kun Pocket 3. The protagonist from the original game died in an accident and has been revived as a robot slave for his now evil "friend" Kameda. If you screw up, you can get drowned by the mafia, have your corpse tossed in a junkyard, get imprisoned to death inside a box and get beaten into submission by Kameda. Several dateable girls and the Littlest Cancer Patient will die if you fail their questlines.
      • The Mysterious Happiness Island story from Powerful Pro-kun Pocket 6. After the Wakura factory becomes bankrupt, you're sent off to a concentration camp to work for a Nazi-esque army that deals with arms trafficking, performs Psycho Serum experimentation on humans and terrorizes the natives of the island. You can get executed if you slack off or addicted to drugs if you depend on them to refill your health meter. The bad endings involve you turning into their lackey or otherwise allowing them to continue their operations until the island is riddled with graves. If you defeat the BB army, then the most symphatetic of their enforcers ends up sentenced to death by firing squad, though she doesn't regret it. If you had befriended her through the story, you get to see her die.
  • Dating Sim: Since Pawapuro 4, you can date one or more of the girls who appear in the story.
  • Denial of Animality: Igumori in Pawapoke Dash insists she's human but has dog ears and her dates all involve playing with her like she's one. Turns out she's really a dog who was run over by a car and then granted another chance at life as a hybrid by the Baseball God. However, it is only temporary unless she's on the winning team of a national-level competition and... there's not enough time. She either dies alone and miserable or at peace depending on whether Power Pro befriends her or not.
  • Eagleland: The final boss for Pawapoke 6 is an American team whose coach wastes no time in singing his country's praises with a display of censored landmarks in the background. They're a huge jump in difficulty and canonically defeat the protagonists.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • Regarding Power Pro games:
      • The first Power Pro with a Success mode was 3. It didn't have many features and had a small cast of characters which didn't include a eyeglass friend. Even the "終" game over screen hadn't been thought up yet.
    • Regarding Power Pocket games:
      • The first Pawapoke to have an Inner Success story was 2. 3 was rushed for the Game Boy Advance's launch and didn't have one. Inner Successes were at first locked until the Inners were cleared, but then they made that in-game store that pretty much forces you to sacrifice a successful run to earn enough points to unlock them quickly. The last few games in the series, however, actually let you play both Successes from the get-go.
      • Pawapoke 2 has a Playable Epilogue that lasts until December of the third year. Every other game plays the ending once you clear the tournament or final boss.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending:
    • The Pro-kun from the original Pawapoke canonically dies in an accident after a forced marriage, is brought back as a cyborg in the third game and has to work his ass off to pay rent and mantain his new body. Ultimately, he does manage to find success and is restored to human form. He even gets a girlfriend he actually likes depending of your choices.
    • The time-travelling Pro-kun from Pawapoke 6 fails to save his boss' factory from bankruptcy without even managing to find the time criminal that was thought to be responsible. Sent to a concentration camp administrated by an evil army, he manages to dismantle them from within and then rebuilds his factory from scratch as the new boss.
    • The Pro-kun from Pawapoke Dash manages to bring both his parents back to life (though they have halos on) at the end of the second Success mode.
  • Eastern RPG: Success Mode scenarios with traditional JRPG fares has been implanted in the Powerful Pocket games, in which you mainly fight monsters and robots instead of playing baseball. The ballplayer you're rewarded with after a successful run, instead, comes from in-universe Hand Wave.
  • Enemy Without: Red and most of the other Pocket Rangers in Pawapoke 7 are delusions of the protagonist brought into reality by his desire to become a baseball champion. The protagonist realizes this upon finding a crayon doodle of Red he had drawn as a kid.
  • Evil Uncle: Suguru from Pawapoke 2 acts as one to the protagonist of Dash. Guilt-ridden over accidentally killing the boy's father with a home run and the death of his wife in an airplane crash, he antagonizes the boy and challenges him to a batting match towards the end of the game. Thankfully, they do reconcile at the end and Suguru even adopts the boy.
  • Extended Gameplay: With so many games in this series, the dev team has to make each one robust in its own right. Clearing the main Success Mode in a given game lets you use the character you built in Pennant, a Career Mode. Clear that and you'll be allowed to use them in a custom team. Most games in the series also feature a secret love interest for Success Mode and an unlockable story that is fantasy-themed and has RPG mechanics. And then there are minigames on the side, too.
    • The alternate Success mode for Pawapoke Dash is one of the few that continue the main mode's story.
  • Face–Heel Turn:
    • While Power Pro #1 from the first Pocket game suffers from a Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome his former ally Kameda suffers from a Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome. After his own appearance as a ressurected cyborg villain in the second game, Kameda revives Pro, but views him as a tool to get rich and make it big on the criminal underworld of Baseball. He's all too willing to sell Pro off or even kill him for failure. Depending on certain outcomes he even uses all the rent money he's been getting from Pro to build a giant robot and then tries to beat the poor guy into slavery.
    • Pro #1 himself can turn evil in the third Pawapoke and choose to help Kameda establish the Neo Propeller Team.
    • One bad ending from Pawapoke 6's Happiness Island story shows the protagonist becoming a madly loyal soldier for the Blood Butterfly army.
  • Fanservice: Despite being SD, Konami dished out costumes for the three recurring females which includes Sexy Santa Dress, Miko, Kimono Fanservice, swimsuits, and even apron which can be downloaded and worn in the middle of a ballgame.
  • Fake Longevity: In some of the latter Pawapoke games you need coins to unlock things such as the Inner Success mode and minigames, but normally you only get 1 coin times the amount of successful Success runs you have. To earn more coins at once at the end of a run you need to forfeit both your character and the right to view what epilogues you earned and the chance to unlock any new ones at the gallery.
  • Featureless Protagonist: The default Power Pro-kun mascot looks like a nondescript baseball dude so that players can project themselves into his shoes. Subverted in games like Pawapoke 6, 8 and 9, where the heroes wear distinct outfits when not playing Baseball.
  • Formula-Breaking Episode: Inner Success stories in the Pocket series more often than not have nothing to do with Baseball, are set on fantasy worlds, have turn-based RPG or roguelike gameplay and use a cast of characters from previous installments.
  • "Freaky Friday" Flip: The premise of Pawapoke 5. Power Pro crashes face first into a popular player and ends up swapping minds with him. The player takes the role of this new character as he attempts to take his body back from Power Pro. In the end it never happens, but the protagonist ends up embracing his new identity.
  • Fun Size: Inverted trope. The Professional Baseball Spirits series is the realistic counterpart to this one.
  • Game-Over Man:
    • The game over screens for the Success modes can be rather harsh, but then you'll see the Baseball God encouraging you to try again, even after you run out of continues.
    • Once or twice per game there's a game over that's a wall of text lamenting your fate with the Arai brothers standing in the background. There's so so many of those that when you open the Gallery menu in Pawapoke 13 it shows a montage of 15.
  • Ghost Leg Lottery: The New Year minigame for Pawapoke Dash is basically this, but a few obstacles is added in the tracks which might change the hero's course.
  • Gratuitous English: Two music tracks in Pawapoke 14 are named "I am a student" and "I was a samurai". Which is weird because the protagonist in the Inner Success mode is a student who becomes a samurai when he falls into another world.
  • Giant Space Flea from Nowhere: Taisho Adventure Edition in Pawapoke 7 has a True Final Boss that steals the show and flattens the main villain's giant mech under its fist. Its identity? A titanic and disturbing-looking... crayon doodle with blank eyes.
  • Golden Ending: If you've seen the credits roll, then you know you got the canon ending of a given game (although earlier games play it regardless). You can still end up with bad epilogues from making the wrong choices, though.
  • The Greatest Story Never Told: After the protagonist of Pawapoke 7 destroys the Pocket Heroes, everyone except him and his team forgets about them.
  • Guide Dang It!: There is a lot in those games you might not know are in there even after several playthroughs.
    • In some games, there are dialogue trees where you're under a hidden time limit to choose something. Latter installments give a visible timer for those occasions... and then have the jackassery to sometimes put hidden time limits within those time limits.
    • The games usually have about 6 love interests, with one being locked away in New Game Plus in certain games. But how do you even meet them and get their phone number? How do you successfully hook up with them when repeatedly dating is not enough? Sometimes their questlines are even filled with luck-based elements...
    • Take "Koshien Hero Edition" from Pawapoke 7, for example. The game has no special goals to be achieved every year for you to see the ending and record your character, but to access the final boss and the game's real ending you must follow the Rebellion route and oppose the sentai heroes at every turn. Make one wrong choice and you drop into the standard Submission route. At one point, you must pick the correct dialogue option under a time limit... except you actually have less time (3 seconds) than the timer indicates on-screen. Clearing this route is mandatory to get Mao's good ending.
    • It's tough enough to clear the 5000$ debt in Pawapoke 7's Taisho Adventure mode, but to fight the True Final Boss you need your bag full of good items to get over 90 points in the baseball puppet competition at the last day of the story. This also requires you to figure out pretty much everything about the game and not get unlucky with the random events.
  • Happily Ever After: The first Power Pro from the Pocket series gets forced to marry Norika and is very displeased about it. Then he dies in an accident. In 2 Norika might get her hands on the second Power Pro as well, ending the game on a similarly painful note. The trope is played straight in several other endings across the series, though, and some even show the local Power Pro and his chosen love interest having children.
  • Happy Ending Override: The worst possibilities for Pawapoke 1's ending are made canon by 2 and 3. Kameda dies during the raid on the Propeller Team and is brought back as their cyborg minion. The original Power Pro is forced to marry Norika and later dies in an accident. Kameda then revives him as his own cyborg lackey, starting the plot of 3.
  • The Hero: Each game features a different incarnation of Pawapuro-kun/Power Pro-kun which is named by the player. One exception is Pawapoke 5, where after setting Pro's name and attributes we see him getting his mind swapped with another guy, who is the actual protagonist.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: In Power Pro 5 , Gaidō Kyōji, the same guy who managed to poison your team's bentos last year, managed to make a truck lost control by using a banana peal in hopes to remove Mamoru out of the competetion. What happened instead was Suzumu shoved his older brother out of the way and took the brunt of the accident all by himself. Suzumu was hospitalized, and Mamoru was understandably, pissed.
  • Heterosexual Life-Partners: There gotta be that guy with huge eyeglasses on his face who'll be your best friend and/or your roommate.
  • Identical Stranger: Yabe has a bunch of lookalikes in Power Pro-kun Pocket games. Marvin is his U.S.A counterpart.
  • Indy Escape: There's a minigame in Pawapoke 4 in which Power Pro must outrun a boulder via Smashing Survival. There are coins to collect on the way, but the actually valuable ones only appear in dead ends as some sort of sick consolation or bait.
  • Infinity +1 Sword: Each romanceable girl in a given game is associated with a special powerup.
  • Insistent Terminology: The spine labels for the PS1 installments romanizes the word Pawafuru as it is, despite the fact that Pawafuru is simply a Japanese transliteration of the word "Powerful".
  • Inventory Management Puzzle: In Pawapoke 3, you increase Pro-kun's stats by acquiring and equipping items instead of training. That's because he's a cyborg in this story. This mechanic also shows up in Taisho Adventure from 7, in which Pro-kun crafts a baseball player puppet.
  • It's a Wonderful Failure: The series is filled with horrible game overs and bad endings where Pawapuro-kun is forced to give up his dream, gets fired and is forced to live on the streets or even gets outright killed.
    • Pawapoke 3 can end with the protagonist being drowned by the mafia, dumped in the trash after dying from exhaustion or locked inside a small container until he dies. If he duels Kameda in the end and loses, it isn't a game over but he becomes his slave and the epilogue shows the villain reviving the Propeller organization.
    • When you hit a mine in the Minesweeper minigame in Pawapoke 3 you get a harsh screen shake, a child's voice saying "huh uh" in a mocking tone, a screen showing all the items you've lost and finally a scene of Power Pro lying severely injured on the ground.
    • If you return to the future at the end of Pawapoke 6, the game guilt-trips you for leaving all your friends behind.
    • Also from 6, in Happiness Island Edition, you can get executed by the soldiers of the neo-nazi/Unit 731 pastiche Blood Butterfly army or Eaten Alive by a giant frog-scorpion hybrid. Both cases end with Oda looking distraught after making you a grave. In some other failure conditions, you die and nobody even finds your corpse. Another bad ending has you turning out such a good lackey that you get promoted to a soldier and start pushing Oda and the rest of your former friends around with mad eyes.
    • In Pawapoke 7 it is possible to end up brainwashed and join the psycho Pocket Rangers or to be defeated and imprisioned along with everyone into a creepy-ass crayon drawing as Red and the other Rangers resume their conquest of the country. And in the alternate Taisho Adventure story, getting killed results in a cutscene showing the consequences in detail and ends with a shot of a vandalized statue that was made in your memory.
  • I Work Alone: If you clear Pawapoke 3 without recruiting or dating anyone, the epilogue will show Power Pro wandering the world while confidently stating he doesn't need any friends.
  • Jump Scare: When Power Pro gets lovestruck there is a chance for him to get run over by a truck after a date. This displays a sudden full-screen cutscene with a very shaky camera.
  • Karma Meter: Pawapoke 3 has one. If you'e a good guy you forgive Kameda and get your humanity restored at the end of the story. If you're a bad guy, you'll help Kameda in his evil ways and will keep living as a cyborg. The real challenge is to be a so-so guy, which makes the protagonist want to kick Kameda's ass at the end.
  • Kid Hero: The Power Pros from Pawapoke Dash and Pawapoke 14 are elementary school students.
  • Kind Hearted Cat Lover: Mao Serizawa in Pawapoke 7 gets in a traffic accident to save a cat. Her name happens to be chinese for "cat", as well.
  • Knight Templar: The Pocket Heroes in Pawapoke 7 are ruthless justice enforcers. They bring success to the protagonist's baseball team, but only by kicking everyone else out of it. Plus, they end up starting their own secret criminal schemes to further make people depend on them. At first Red is the most level-headed of the Pockets and refuses to misuse his superpowers, but eventually goes mad as well.
  • Laser-Guided Amnesia: In the good ending of Pawapoke 7, everyone forgets about the Pocket Heroes once they're defeated. If Mao (who is Ranger Black) was the chosen Love Interest, the protagonist may end up forgetting about her too. Whether this happens or not is decided at random when you confess to her midway through the story.
  • Last-Second Ending Choice:
    • One example can be found in Pawapoke 6. The time-travelling hero might be able to choose whether to return to the future or to start anew in the past. You chose to return? Congratulations: the game plays depressing music over the epilogue sequence, shows every friend you interacted with missing you and displays the blank The End screen you'd get from a game over while your GBA gains a life of its own, invades your fridge and eats all your food.
    • In the same game's Happiness Island Edition, the hero can choose to keep serving under the Blood Butterfly army or to take them down. The standard and canon final boss is Mecha Kameda, but it is possible to instead awaken a giant frog monster who must be fought off with the Gander Robo.
  • Light Is Not Good: Pawapoke 7 revolves around a bizarre invasion of sentai superheroes who come to the protagonist's school and try to take over the local baseball team. They seek to bring peace to the city, but abuse their powers to brainwash the population and are secretly responsible for many of the incidents they solve.
  • Lighter and Softer: The Pawapoke series never got quite as dark as the slavery camp from 6 again, and began to ease up somewhat on having very depressing and haunting game overs and bad endings.
  • Limit Break: A team's players in Pawapoke 14 share a super gauge with 5 slots. Once a slot is used, you skip over having to aim your swing or throw but the opponent can counter with their own super move and then you'll both duke it out via button smashing. Depending of character, a super move will come out in a power level up to 3 depending of the current meter you have or regardless of it. A successful level 2-3 super will result in either a strike-out or a home run.
  • Littlest Cancer Patient: The hero of Pawapoke 3 can meet a girl named Yukari who suffers from a grave disease and needs three million yen for treatment. If you don't want to be visiting her grave at the end of the story, you'll need to manage Pro's health and work schedule very very well to earn that much money. Unfortunately, she's never heard of again for the rest of the series.
  • Look Both Ways: Traffic accidents are a constant in the Pawapoke games.
    • If Power Pro-kun goes on too many dates in a row he'll get lovestruck and in certain games this can trigger a random event where he becomes so air-headed that he gets run over by a truck. This might not cause an immediate game over but it will do severe damage to Pro's health and even destroy random items in your inventory depending of the game.
    • That event actually is part of a girl's route in Pawapoke 3. She gives her phone number after Pro-kun gets trucked in her place and then gives some items to compensate for his equipment loss.
    • In Pawapoke 13 the protagonist gets hit by a car early in the story and all his stats are set to the F grade. Getting back to form is the main goal of his story.
  • Luck-Based Mission: Any Success mode, because of the random chances to get bonus, items, injury, extremely bad luck, and fatigue that ruins your entire career.
    • CPU autoplay can easily mess up a match, putting you in a position where no matter how good you play, you cannot win. This isn't the case if you're a pitcher, where you may control the defense. And even real time AI defense is more reliable than using the time skip function.
    • Drawing a match causes the rematch that you won't get to play, meaning it's 50% or less chances you'll win.
    • Ghost enemies in Taisho Adventure from Pawapoke 7 can only be damaged from spiritual attacks, which means meeting the priestess character during a certain random event is critical to progress. In another random event she can teach you how to hurt ghosts by yourself after a long meditation session... which also has a random chance of failure.
    • Mao Serizawa's story in Pawapoke 7 is completely luck-based. You get her phone number after some events randomly play several weeks into the story. Dating her and letting her choose where to hang out has a chance of resulting in special plot-important events. Confessing to her, if successful, triggers either a Bittersweet Ending or a happy one (you can tell by a minor change in one line). When trying to save her from Ranger Pink, there's a chance for Mao to die in a Heroic Sacrifice even if you pick the correct choice (C), unless you happen to have a special item that enables an alternate one (E). Said item is only received in an event that plays if you hook up with Mao as soon as possible.
    • New Year minigame events are often luck-based.
    • Pawapoke 13 and 14 have a scratch card minigame that lets you quickly build characters. You must choose 3 panels from each card to get upgrades until you clear ten cards, but if you find the single X mark on any of them you have to start over from card 1. Internally, the positions of each item are mixed every time you choose one.
  • Meaningful Name: Dr. Daijōbu's name means "Are you okay?", which is ironic because his surgery is anything but okay.
  • Missing Mom: Several protagonists in the series have no parents. In particular, the deceased parents of the protagonist from the final Pawapoke game are implied to be people from previous games (possibly even the original protagonist or the one from 8) but the truth is never revealed.
  • Motive Decay: In Pawapoke Dash, the protagonist wants to win a national-level baseball tournament so his father can be revived. Performing actions unrelated to Baseball adds to the Heaven gauge, which once full means his father's spirit will fade away for good and cause a Game Over.
  • Multiple Endings: The aforementioned failure screens aside, each Success Mode has a bunch of Where Are They Now epilogue scenes that play if you build a relationship with one or more characters just right or horribly wrong. One odd mechanic is that the series lets you forfeit the chance to see the ending and erase your character in exchange for more coins to unlock stuff with.
  • Musical Nod:
    • The secret final boss for Pawapoke 6's Happiness Island Edition is designed after the Impact battles from the SNES Ganbare Goemon games, so the battle theme begins with the same notes from the original.
    • The epilogue theme for Pawapoke Dash is a variation of the one from 5, which was the previous game to feature Suguru, the protagonist's uncle (8 was released before Dash but takes place later in the timeline).
  • New Game Plus:
    • From Pawapoke 6 on, you gain a certain amount of points every time you clear a Success mode (more if you forfeit your save). You can use those points to buy starting items for your next playthrough.
    • After clearing Cyborg Edition in Pawapoke 3 three times you unlock a Minesweeper minigame whre you can use your custom characters to earn more stats and skills for them. Of course, tripping on a mine means getting all your hard work scrapped forever.
  • Nintendo Hard: Made a bad decision? Are you bad at baseball? Failed a minigame? You are dead. Start the whole game over.
  • No Death Run:
    • One event in Pawapoke 4 requires you to achieve a large score on a Gradius-esque minigame where you only get one life. And by "minigame" we mean that it is a simple but fully-fledged shmup with several short levels and bosses. Good luck.
    • Pawapoke 5 has another Gradius minigame which for better or for worse is significantly shorter. 6 followed suit with a vertical shmup where you fight giant cockroaches. It only has a single boss with two phases.
  • No Fair Cheating: Reseting a game in progress costs a continue and comes with penalties. Before Pawapoke 7 and in any Pennant modes, however, reseting can salvage your save because there's no Continue feature in those.
  • No Mouth: Most characters in the series have no visible mouth, and instead rely on their eyes and head shape to convey expressions. Incidentally, a series of LINE stickers from former developers of the Pawapoke series does depict the characters with a nose and a mouth.
  • No Name Given: All Power Pros have no Canon Name except for the protagonist of Pawapuro 5, Tetsuo Toi.
  • Nonstandard Game Over: In certain games can get bad endings even after winning the obligatory tournament at the end of a story. Sometimes you get to keep your custom character with penalties to his stats (like if Kameda enslaves Hero 1.3 in Pawapoke 3's bad ending), but in some installments you can end up fired or retired (Pawapoke 6 and 8) and then that's a Game Over screen on your face.
  • The Not-Love Interest:
    • Most of the female ball players including the mentioned three are not date-able, since they are considered team mates rather than love interests.
    • One of the "dateable" girls in Pawapoke 3 is a child whom the protagonist must care for by paying her healthcare.
  • Oddball in the Series:
    • Another game developed by Diamond Head for the Super Famicom was Live Power Pro Wrestling '96 - Max Voltage. It is completely unrelated to this series even in art style despite what the name would suggest. Power Pro-kun doesn't even make a cameo among the Konami wrestlers!
    • Pawapoke Dash presents Baseball matches as a card game with roulettes. In the standard Success mode, because the baseball simulator isn't included at all. Power Pro-kun even reacts in surprise when the battle screen first comes up. It was also odd in that it was released for the Game Boy Advance after the series had migrated to the Nintendo DS. The card game then actually gets added to latter Pawapoke entries until it is redesigned for the final one.
    • Pawapoke Koushien for the DS in 2005 still used the baseball engine from the GBA games. Its storyline was unrelated to the rest of the series, so Konami later stopped considering it a Pocket entry. The sequel Atsumare! Power Pro-kun no DS Koushien still used a modified GBA engine and let you play as a manager. It wasn't advertised as a Pocket game from the beginning. Nettou! Power Pro-kun no DS Koushien was then a board game with its own distinct card battle mechanics and artstyle.
    • One of the Nintendo DS spinoffs was Powerful Golf, which is, well, a golf simulator.
  • Older Than They Look: Every game has a Power Pro and a Glasses Clan member who generally look the exact same as each other regardless of their age. Though it is downplayed in the Power Pros' case as their appearance is meant to be a blank state. In cutscenes, child characters are actually depicted as being smaller than adults.
  • Once an Episode: Nearly every Pawapoke has the following events:
    • The protagonist receives some kind of tutorial from a character who explodes once he's done. It was just a dream.
    • The protagonist hears he'll get fired, crippled or even killed if he doesn't live properly for the next 3 years. The poor guy then makes either just the "scribble" shocked expression or all of them in a row.
    • At the end there will be a shot of the Gundar Robo or some kind of kaiju emerging from a cityscape for some kind of final battle.
  • Only Sane Man: The main character, Power Pro-kun, tends to be the most level-headed in any story.
  • Opaque Nerd Glasses: Yabe and his clones.
  • Ordinary High-School Student: Or a college student, or a rookie pro, depending on the games.
  • Passionate Sports Girl: Aoi, Misaki, and Hijiri are all national-level (and even professional) players in their respective teams despite being females. There are loads of other female players as the series progresses as well.
  • Password Save: Characters created in one game wil generate a set of long password which can transfer the character's stat into the next game. Success Mode's characters' real stats also can be unlocked via a password input (something that is banned in an online play).
  • Playing Tennis with the Boss: The final boss for Happiness Island Edition in Pawapoke 6 suddenly turns the game into a Zelda parody. Mecha Kameda can't be harmed normally, so just avoid his claws and slash his missiles until he fires an energy orb you can knock back at him.
  • The Power of Friendship: Getting your teammate to like you allows special training and events with them, where they help you rack up your skill points.
  • The Power of Love: To the lesser extent to the above, getting a girlfriend does net you with better fatigue and stat boosts, especially if the girl is an athlete who likes dragging you on a workout for a date.
  • Press Start to Game Over: It is possible to play some of the Power Pro games so badly that you can get kicked out of a team or get a career-ending injury within the first few minutes of the story.
  • The Promise: When starting to date Momoko in Pawapoke Dash, the protagonist must promise to meet her once per month on a certain week. Forget it even once, even towards the end, and she will ditch you before disappearing forever. Geez.
  • Puzzle Boss: In Pawapoke Dash's RPG mode, the boss fight can only be defeated by a certain method. It becomes awfully powerful on its second phase but has to cool down every 6 turns. So walk 6 steps, hit him twice and repeat until he's reduced to rubble. The optional boss at the bottom of the dungeon works the same way, but it takes longer to reach the second phase and it has a third one where he fires a powerful beam if you move away from him.
  • Recurring Boss: In the Gradius minigame in Pawapoke 4 you fight a Core as a boss several times. On each battle it wields different powers and then flees when defeated, except at the very end when you can finally shoot it dead.
  • Recurring Character:
    • The hero from Pawapoke 1 is also the protagonist of 3. He's the only Power Pro who appears in more than one game.
    • Yabe Akio is present in every Power Pro game since his debut in 4.
    • Some Yabe lookalikes show up in more than one story. In particular, Kameda (Pawapoke 1) reappears as an antagonist in certain games and Yuda (7, 8), Yamada (4, 6) and Oda (6 — from the Happiness Island story) play a big role in 14 as the protagonist's parents.
    • The three women ball players (Aoi Hayakawa, Mizuki Tachibana, and Hijiri Rokudo)
    • The Rival Ikari Brothers (Mamoru and Suzumu) and Ryo Tomozawa
    • Kageyama The NPB Scout.
    • Mao Serizawa makes some appearances after Pawapoke 7, still working as a sentai heroine.
    • Dr. Daijōbu, a doctor that will find anyone for his research.
    • The Baseball God who appears after a game over has a larger role in some stories.
    • A blonde foreign man appears in pretty much every Pocket game while falling victim to all kinds of accidents. The Arai brothers also show up all the time, even when their sister Norika doesn't.
  • Reused Character Design:
    • Different incarnations of Power Pro-kun and his glassy friend Akio Yabe exist concurrently over the course of the series. And when somebody from the Glasses Clan isn't available, somebody else with nerdy glasses shows up in their place.
    • In games that have a second Success mode, you'll surely see alternate versions of characters from previous stories as well.
  • Samus Is a Girl: The black ranger in Pawapoke 7 is a girl called Mao Serizawa.
  • Save-Game Limits: The one save slot in the Japanese games' Success mode acts as a quicksave, which deletes itself upon a load or a game over. If a game does not erase the file while it is in play, resetting the game is considered a death and expends one of your continues. MLB Power Pros games allows Save Scumming, otherwise.
  • Secret Character: From Pawapoke 7 to 9 (including Dash), one of the six love interests only appears if unlocked for a New Game Plus.
  • Serious Business: Any hard mode scenarios involving "elite baseball school" or an army of sort. You'll be constantly tested of your skills and will get a game over really fast if you're not up to the standards.
    • In Factory Baseball Society from Pawapoke 6, the fate of corporations is decided in Baseball matches.
  • Sexy Discretion Shot: Pawapoke 13 has implied sexual encounters between the protagonist and most of his love interests that make use of this trope. You know, for kids!
  • "Shaggy Dog" Story:
    • In Pawapoke 6 the hero travels to the past to stop a time criminal who sabotaged the factory he works for. The culprit's identity is never revealed and they were actually attempting to restore the timeline to its original state, which only elaborated upon several games later. The two canonically don't even meet because the game over from losing the final match is the true ending. Ultimately subverted by the Happiness Island story being a direct sequel to this and ending with the hero becoming the president of his factory and ensuring it won't get bankrupt again.
    • In Pawapoke Dash, the Baseball God promises the protagonist he'd revive his father from his current possessed ball form if he won a national-level baseball championship in three years. The protagonist succeeds, but his father's soul moves on anyway. This is subverted in the second Success mode, where the boy does manage to bring both his parents back to life. There is also a literal example in that Igumori the dog girl also had a deal with the Baseball God she's unable to fulfill.
  • Shout-Out:
    • Pawapoke 4 and 5 have Gradius minigames. In 6, the hero owns a laser gun that shoots the ring laser ripples from that series.
    • Pawapoke 5 has a Falling Blocks minigame called "Hako de Gucha". It means "Box de Splat", as in "Panel de Pon". It plays nothing like Nintendo's puzzler, though.
    • Pawapoke 6 has a secret final boss which recreates the gameplay of the Goemon Impact giant robot battles from the SNES Ganbare Goemon games. It goes as far as showing Power Pro riding the seat elevator to the mech's head the same way as portrayed in Ganbare Goemon 2 and making a little nod to the battle theme from that game.
    • Pawapoke 8 has a Contra minigame. The game's story is loosely based on Snatcher.
  • Show Within a Show: "Space-Time Warrior Gundar Robo", a Gundam + Mazinger Z + Macross mashup. It is first talked about in Pawapuro 6 and the titular giant robot is made into reality in Pawapoke 3, 6 and 7. It makes even more apparances as an enemy or playable mech in the Inner Success scenarios.
  • Sibling Yin-Yang: The Ikari brothers: the older Mamoru is an aloof main rival; the younger Suzumu is a Nice Guy.
  • Simple Score of Sadness:
    • Pawapoke 2 and 7 have a simple slow song that plays in melancholic scenes.
    • A certain game over screen in Pawapoke 13 shortly plays a slow misuc box version of the game's Recurring Riff.
  • Simultaneous Arcs: Pawapoke 1 happens during the second year of Power Pro 5. Pawapoke 3 and 4 happen at the same time. 7 starts midway through the plot of 6. Dash starts during thew second year of 7 and ends as 8 begins. 8, 9 and 10 are also concurrent but this stops for the rest of the series.
  • Sliding Scale of Realistic vs. Fantastic: Pawapuro games have Mundane stories and Pawapoke games have Unrealistic and Unusual stories. The Inner Success modes in the Pawapokes have flat-out Fantastic stories. What's strange, though, is that the actual Baseball gameplay was pretty mundane all across the franchise until the final Pawapoke, which finally gave everyone energy-based super moves.
  • Sound Test: The first Pawapoke to have one was 7, though it starts out locked. Dash had 5 tracks from every previous game except 8 in its series retrospective. Again, Dash was for the Game Boy Advance and 8 was on the DS, so the sound hardware was incompatible.
  • Spirit Advisor: In Pawapoke Dash, the local Power Pro-kun's father gets killed by a baseball to the face and his spirit latches on to it. Failing to take care of the ball is a game over condition, but the man passes away for good at the end of the story anyway once the boy wins a championship.
  • Status Effects:
    • Certain events will inflict a physical or mental illness on Power Pro, requiring the player to use a turn to take him to a doctor or a therapist. For a chance to get healed. And for only one status at a time. Certain statuses give penalties on each turn or make Pro unable to train properly. And as mentioned before, getting lovestruck is bad news: you're forced to have a date on the next turn and Pro might get hit by a truck afterwards.
    • A particularly nasty one is the addiction to gachapon in Pawapoke 5 and 6. There are certain events, some optional, some mandatory, where the local glasseye dude asks you for money to buy action figures and other nerdy stuff. If you go along with that enough times, the protagonist gets addicted as well and begins randomly wasting turns to go to the toy store. This status cannot be healed. The game even plays an ominous cutscene like you got a game over and enables a bad epilogue for the ending.
  • Super-Deformed: The characters are short and big headed. Like Bomberman they have no nose and mouth but they also lack legs. The latter Pawapoke games let you play as realistic people in Free Play mode, though.
  • Team Pet:
    • A recurring puppy (Gundar) usually appears as the series mascot. In-game, it acts as a supporting cast that forces you into extra trainings.
    • The Pawapoke series has a different dog character for each game.
  • Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Some of the Success Mode's scenarios let you play as a woman... which is the regular Powapuro-Kun with eyelashes and a huge ribbon.
    • Yabita Akiko is basically Yabe with a woman's hair.
  • The End:
    • In most death sequences, "End" shows up in hiragana (おわり) The actual endings have a triumphant "Clear" message in katakana first and then show "End" after the credits while Power Pro waves goodbye.
    • The game over screen shows "End" in kanji (終) in blood-red over a silent black screen for most of the series. The latter Pawapoke installments instead have a red background with a stylized black "終" filling out the whole top screen. While the first can be sad to look at, the second is like the game is smugly rubbing your failure in.
  • Timed Mission: Success modes usually span three in-game years. There often is some objective you must achieve before a certain date to prevent a Game Over.
    • In Pawapoke 3 you must raise each of your stats to a certain amount before the end of the first year to get drafted, save several million yen to develop a long-term battery for Power Pro's body before the end of the second and then keep his Memory gauge over 80% to get past the third year. Failure to do any of this results in a Game Over.
    • Taisho Adventure in Pawapoke 7 gives you 200 days to clear a debt of 5000 yen. You must also obtain enough stat enhancers to get a score of 90 at the puppet contest in the final day to fight the true final boss.
  • Title Scream: Every game has a voice shouting the title on the title screen. In some you actually can press a button other than Start to enter the main menu without the shout.
  • Together in Death: Subverted in Pawapoke Dash. The second Success mode sees the protagonist trapped in the Underworld until he walks on his dead parents having lunch. He gets pulled out of there before getting to talk to them, looks sadly at the sky... and realizes they're still right next to him.
  • Tournament Arc: A local baseball cup spans at least a quarter of a Success Mode. Losing a match usually means a game ending sequence; therefore, the longer you persist in the tournament, the longer you can develop your character.
  • True Final Boss: Achieving some difficult goal in a Success mode will award you a final boss and the true ending. Those battles generally are examples of an Unexpected Gameplay Change.
  • Tsundere: Becky.
  • Unintentionally Unwinnable: There's so much that could go wrong in a playthrough. Quest lines that involve minigames, for a minor example, get harder with each minigame cleared. In Pawapoke 7, do not let the block-matching game be the last, as the CPU is nigh invincible on difficulty 4.
  • Unwanted Harem: Hakusetsu High School scenario in the iOS app. Your character trains hard to get enrolled into Hakusetsu's baseball club, only to find out there's only women playing there. Worse off at least four girls got attached to him, so the team's principle forces you to play date with them to keep the morale up.
  • Victorious Childhood Friend/Unlucky Childhood Friend: Becky Fox, depend on whatever you woo her or not.
  • Video Game Remake: Remakes of the first two Game Boy Pawapokes were done in the engine for 6 and released as a compilation for the GBA.
  • Video Game Tutorial: Pawapoke Dash features an unusual card game mode in place of the baseball simulator, so it gives detailed instructions to the player. The protagonist even gets surprised when it happens. The tutorial is mandatory on the first playthrough, but is skipped afterwards.
  • Visual Novel: The Success Mode, a rare case you'll see your character on screen.
  • We Can Rebuild Him:
    • In Pawapoke 1, Suzumu was hospitalized due to a traffic accident and was abducted by the Propeller Team during his stay. He was subjected to many surgeries which boosts his ability as a pitcher and batter considerably. You will see him again donning the persona of Yakyūmasuku(Roughly translates to "The Masked Baseballer") serving the Holy Emperor High School, the game's Final Boss.
    • In Pawapoke 2, the Propeller Team revives Kameda as a cyborg. He's later restored to human form.
    • In Pawapoke 3, we find out the original Power Pro died between games. Not to worry, though, Kameda has him rebuilt as a cyborg. With cheap materials. By the end of the story, Pro gets his mind transferred to a cloned body.
  • Weirdness Censor: Horuhisu in Pawapoke 6 is a good guy who's part of your team, but nobody other than the protagonist seems to notice something's off about him. He is a creepy-looking living crayon scribble with wide Blank White Eyes and a vacant and perpetual wide smile.
  • What Happened to the Mouse?:
    • We usually never get to know what ever happened to the protagonist of a given game after his adventure since there are so many possible outcomes and the developers are adamant in "preserving the player's imagination". The one time we did was the aforementioned Happy Ending Override from Pawapoke 1 to 3.
    • We last see Kameda scheming something in Pawapoke 5. Then he's never heard of again.
    • Later on the Pawapoke series, we learn a building was set on top of the empty lot from Dash. It is left ambiguous if Momoko the peach tree was left in her place.
    • Suzumu's fate was remain unkown at the end of Power Pro 5's success mode. This is averted however if you consider the story of the spinoff.
  • A Winner Is You: There usually is a group shot artwork with a congratulations message that unlocks after you witness every ending and epilogue in a given game.
  • You ALL Look Familiar: Before the MLB games, every player in the actual gameplay has only one appearance. You also can't change your look outside skin color. This is quickly inverted into Cast of Snowflakes since then.
  • You Have Failed Me: In Happiness Island Edition you have to manage the "Dog Meter". If you fail to serve the Blood Butterfly army properly and it drops to zero they'll execute you in cold blood. You don't want the meter to fill all the way, either, as that will trigger the ending where you turn into their madly loyal soldier.

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