Power Pro-kun Pocket 7 is a 2004 Baseball simulator + dating sim + turn-based RPG developed by Diamond Head and published by Konami for the Game Boy Advance. The story for Outer Success was made a little more complicated and the systems for the RPG scenario were changed or simplified.
It was the first Pawapoke to get an OST CD with a vocal version of one of its most notable songs. After this game the series migrated to the Nintendo DS, but the spinoff Pawapoke Dash was still developed for the GBA.
In 2021, the game's Koshien Hero scenario got loosely adapted into Live Powerful Pro Baseball Mobile as Hanamaru Highschool with plot points and characters from other installments in the Pocket series. That version is also featured in Pawapuro 2022.
Outer Success Mode: Koshien Hero Edition
After a painful string of defeats, "Hero 7" from Hanamaru High School can only wish for a miracle as his team is about to lose yet again. Luckily enough, a sentai hero called Red suddenly jumps in and scores a Home Run for them. The next day, Red comes to Hanamaru as a transfer student and quickly becomes the school's star, but Hero 7 can't help but feel something's off when more and more Pokerangers begin turning up, each replacing a member of his Baseball club. What is the true nature of those "heroes"?Inner Success Mode: Taisho Adventure Edition
A treasure-hunting detective must go on various adventures around Japan and prepare for a Baseball Doll competition in 200 days to pay off a large debt.This game features the following tropes:
- Amusing Injuries: Mao suffers quite a few in her story. She gets hit by a car, falls from a building and even blows up a bomb in her and Hero 7's faces at one point. However, if you screw up during the fight against Ranger Pink then Mao dies for real later.
- And Then What?: In a plot-important yet very hidden out of the way conversation about superheroes, Kurouchi argues to the protagonist that Japanese ones exist only to fight a nebulous concept of evil and are left with nothing to do once they're done. American caped crusaders, on the other hand, work "to make a world a little better" and have a strong sense of mercy. This becomes a recurring theme in later games, with Mao taking this to heart after listening to it and Red becoming a humble vagrant and eventually saving the world to atone for his corrupt actions in this story.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Hero 7 unwittingly wishes the Pocket Rangers into existence at the start of the story. How the heck it even happened is left unstated.
- Betting Mini-Game: The dice game from Mysterious Happiness Island returns in Taisho Adventure. Predict whether the next result will be higher or lower and roll the dice.
- Big Bad: While friendly at first, Pocket Ranger Red is really the main antagonist in Koshien Hero. He keeps replacing Hanamaru's team with other masked heroes to win at all costs, and it is revealed that all the recent incidents in the city were an inside-job by the Pokerangers in order to consolidate their power.
- Big Damn Heroes: The game begins with Red winning a match for the Hanamaru team and being accepted among them, but it soon becomes apparent that the Pokerangers are obsessed with victory and want to take over the whole team.
- Big Good: To contrast with the sentai hero Red being the villain, the Mad Scientist Dr. Tessai provides special training and resources to Hero 7 so he can fight the Pokerangers. In the end, it is also revealed that Tessai was Good All Along to begin with.
- Book Dumb: There's a hidden stat related to how well Hero 7 is performing at school. It starts at 60, and if it gets low enough, it inflicts the "Red Grade" status and causes a high chance of him getting forbidden from training when you pick that option.
- Brainwashing for the Greater Good: The ultimate goal of the Pokerangers is to achieve peace though large-scale brainwashing. If the final fight is lost, this is then seen happening with Hero 7 himself as one of the victims.
- The Bus Came Back: Suzumu Ikari appears as a recurring doctor who warns Hero 7 to not overexert himself with training, which breaks the rule of Pawapuro characters not appearing after Pawapoke 3. After this, however, the guy really isn't seen for the rest of the series.
- Career-Ending Injury: If Hero 7 overworks himself or suffers injures from training failure or certain events, the Risk gauge will fill up. No points for guessing what happens once it is 100% full.
- Cast from Money: On Taisho Adventure you can inexplicably purchase as many potions, bombs and holy water you need during battles. They'll cost twice their normal price, though.
- Character Filibuster: In one lore-important and yet hidden scene, Kurouchi rants at length to Hero 7 about how Japanese heroes are Knight Templar psychos and American heroes are good samaritans. The protagonist quips to himself that the usually quiet Kurouchi sure is talkative about his hobbies.
- Classic Cheat Code: The two codes below only work once per cartridge.
- On the main menu, set the cursor on the Pawapoke P shop option, hold L+Start and press Up, Right, Down, Left, Up, Left, Down and Right to get 100 Power Points.
- On the Pennant menu, set the cursor on the My Base option, hold L+R and press Up, Right, Down, Left, Up, Left, Down and Right to get 10000 money for the My Base board game.
- Climax Boss: You must challenge the Pokerangers to a Baseball match at about 3/4 of the story to drive them off. They're disproportionately powerful, get their own theme song and will fuck you up if you lose. Thankfully, it is possible to weaken them if certain events come to pass.
Refusing to do so, on the other hand, grants an experience bonus and boosts the performance of your teammates. - Computers Are Fast: Chances are you're not going to be able to beat the block-matching puzzle against the CPU on level 4.
- Continuing is Painful:
- Game Overs are now treated as resets. The game sets you back to a certain point but punishes you with stat losses. After you end up expending all continues it finally brings that one red kanji you don't want to see and erases your save file.
- You can only enter each custom character in My Pennant once, and if you get fired you can reset the GBA twice to keep going with a penalty.
- Crazy-Prepared: Dr. Tessai provides a Gundar Robo, the series' recurring Mazinger Z-like giant mech, for Hero 7 to shoot down the squadron of Pokerangers once they attempt to take over Hanamaru, exclaiming he built it just in case something like that would happen.
- Defend Command: In Taisho Adventure, you cannot heal your allies during battles or give them any commands, but you can make Hero 7 a meat shield for the party. The defend command draws all enemy attacks to him while reducing their damage.
- Eaten Alive: Happens to the Taisho Adventure protagonist if he's defeated by the giant frog called Toshio-kun.
- Enemy Mine: The self-proclaimed evil scientist Tessai Kurono helps Hero 7 throughout the story because the Pokerangers have stolen his monster production machine.
- Fate Worse than Death: Heroes don't kill, so the Pokerangers punish dissenters with brainwashing. In two bad endings, the protagonist either turns into a drone obssessed with Baseball or into a crazed member of the Heroes' team.
- Final Boss: After the Hanamaru team wins the Koshien tournament at the true end of Koshien Hero, the Pokerangers return to dominate Hanamaru High. Hero 7 must pilot the Gundar Robo and shoot them down without damaging his school.
- Girl of My Dreams: As the Pokerangers originated from Hero 7's imagination, Mao can be considered this for him.
- The Greatest Story Never Told: The Pokerangers are erased from the memories of people after Hero 7 defeats them, with only Dr. Tessai believing his story of what had happened.
- Guide Dang It!:
- Clearing Toshien Hero correctly with the Rebellion ending requires you to make various specific choices through the story. One of them is even timed — with less time to choose than shown on screen.
- There are specific pairs of characters you must hire together on missions during Taisho Adventure to unlock their epilogues. Certain characters can also trigger events that increase certain attributes of Hero 7B, though unfortunately there's a luck factor involved.
- Hard Mode Perks:
- In regards to story branching, opposing the Pokerangers means having a difficult Baseball match against them, clearing the Koshien without their aid and then facing them in a rail shooter minigame. Clearing the story this way results in more experience bonuses, is mandatory to date certain love interests, lets you pick your character's jersey number and My Pennant team and displays the staff roll after the ending.
- My Pennant gives up to 16 skill points per match if played on the Powerful level. Most of the special goals that grant otherwise very expensive skills can only be achieved at this difficulty, including the one that awards the special skill.
- Hello, [Insert Name Here]: You start out by giving Hero 7 a name and his role on the Hanamaru team.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Mao sacrifices herself to save Hero 7 from Ranger Pink if you make the wrong choices (and even then the standard right choice has a chance of failing).
- Hijacked by Ganon: If Taisho Adventure is cleared correctly, Kameda's Gundar Golem is destroyed by a giant Horuhisu. This begins a trend of demoting Kameda to an ineffectual villain figure.
- Honor Before Reason: Before playing against the Pokerangers, a random event may appear where Hero 7 finds a device to weaken them. Refusing to use it awards 50 exp points and gets everyone's motivation to maximum for the rest of the story. However, if Mao is the love interest and everything goes well, then Hero 7 can still obtain and use the device afterwards.
- Humongous Mecha: Hero 7 gets to drive Gundar Robo for the final battle against the Pokerangers. This is the third and final time the robot is featured in the series' canon timeline.
- Infinity +1 Sword:
- Each love interest is associated with a special skill (5 for pitchers and 5 for batters) that are always active in matches, with Mao's questline letting you choose between any of them if the correct choices are made.
- Upon clearing Pennant mode, two rare skills can be purchased... but they're very expensive — one of them costs 800 points. One of the special skills is also available in this mode, but only by playing very well on Powerful difficulty.
- In Taisho Adventure, those seven skills occasionally appear as possible prizes for rolling either 3 or 18 in the dice game.
- Inventory Management Puzzle: The Baseball Doll system in Taisho Adventure reuses the inventory from 3 as usual, and the Doll's upgrades have to share space with battle items and mission rewards.
- Invisibility: Ranger Black's special skill.
- It's a Wonderful Failure
- Subverted if you leave the Pokerangers alone in Koshien Hero. They take over your entire team but life goes on relatively well (sans the inevitable brainwashing of the population by the heroes) and you don't lose your custom character.
- In Koshien Hero, losing to Red's team causes him to brainwash Hero 7's entire team into caring for nothing but baseball. Their state of mind is infamously portrayed in the game over screen as a distorted crayon drawing with "HAPPINESS" written on top. Alternatively, losing the final fight results in Red brainwashing Hero 7 as his right-hand man.
- If Hero 7 is crippled from injuries early in the story, it cuts to the episodic mocking haiku game over screen; but if it happens on the third year you get a miserable shot of him looking at his former baseball team from afar.
- Clearing a mission with negative money in Taisho Adventure or failing to save 5000$ for the final day gets you sent off into slavery for the Blood Butterfly army much like in 6. If you die, Yuda makes a statue in your memory and then it gets vandalized. Geez.
- Upon failing Pennant mode, the protagonist is shown crying in a Pose of Supplication under a sunset.
- Joke Character: In Taisho Adventure, Norika will try to force herself into the protagonist's team and will steal his Baseball Doll parts if refused. If you oblige her, you'll find she's a Dirty Coward who runs from battles, steals your money if not called for a quest and is the only character who cannot die. Trying to get her killed on purpose just forces you to pay her medical bills.
- Knight Templar: The Pokerangers are obssessed with justice and most of them freely use their superhuman powers to enforce it.
- Laser-Guided Amnesia: When Ranger Red is defeated, most of the Pokerangers disappear and people forget about them. This can include Mao in her storyline. Whether Hero 7 forgets about her or not is decided at random during the event in which you confess to her.
- Luck-Based Mission:
- You'll randomly get an event where Hero 7 has to train with his friends in exchange for experience points. One option significantly raises the Risk gauge and the second one less so. Refusing to train decreases the friendship between him and his team, which can cause the Rebellion path to become Unintentionally Unwinnable.
- There are a few random or mandatory events that sometimes "award" negative skills or fail to hand out positive ones.
- Mao's route has several luck-based aspects out of the player's control, including the ending.
- To get to date her, you must see some events that play at random weeks. Her Relationship Values are hidden most of the time, and the option to let her choose a dating location has a small chance of starting a special plot-relevant scene.
- Confessing to her requires a certain amount of friendship, and the correct option can still fail. If successful, the game then determines whether you'll get her happy ending or the bittersweet one... if you've already seen the latter one, apparently. If Hero 7 says "さあ, 練習, 練習!!" with two exclamation marks to Yuda on the following scene then all is well.
- You have to hook up with Mao as soon as possible or you won't get the event where she gives Hero 7 a device to weaken the Pokerangers. This comes into play during the battle against Ranger Pink: The device will be option E, the correct one. If you lack it you must pick option C, but it has a chance of failing and causing Mao to sacrifice herself for Hero 7. And even after all the trouble, the special skill from Mao can be missed if her friendship value was below 81 before a certain event.
- Much like in 3, the final fight in Koshien Hero appears to have some kind of hidden difficulty setting. On its highest level, it is overwhelming. There will be a dozen Pokerangers at once running all over the place and they can easily cut through your health meter to pieces with a rain of projectiles that can be impossible to dodge. On top of that, any sentai who are offscreen will heal their shared health. Blowing each one up takes a couple hits too many, and you can't even be trigger-happy in this dumb rail shooter because destroying the Hanamaru Highschool also counts as a loss. Oh, and getting a game over here, if you still have continues, sends you back to the Koshien finals!
- In Taisho Adventure there are ghost enemies who are immune to most attacks. To keep from wasting money on holy water you can recruit a priestess character... who only appears after a certain random point and if you know the right choice that lets the protagonist meet her. After clearing any mission with her on the party there's a chance she can have a meditation session with the protagonist to let him hit ghosts with his normal attacks... but yeah, the event will more often than not result in nothing instead.
- One very annoying thing in My Pennant is that there are a couple of random events that lower your hard-earned points you need to increase your stats. The rare traffic accident event in particular lowers your main batting/throwing stat.
- Multiple Endings: Koshien Hero has the "rebellion" (destroy the Pokerangers) and "submission" (let them take over the team) endings. Taisho Adventure's ending changes a bit if the giant Horuhisu is fought. Both stories have many epilogue scenes that are unlocked for achieving certain tasks or failing them.
- New Game Plus:
- Like in the previous game, you can use points to purchase up to three items for the second playthrough of Koshien Hero and onwards. One of them makes Mao appear in the story.
- You can enter custom characters in My Pennant mode to play a year-long season.
- No Sidepaths, No Exploration, No Freedom: The missions in the Taisho Adventure RPG are straight paths with Random Encounters. You read that right. You can only walk foward and stop to rest, which can trigger encounters. If you cancel a mission, then you're forced to walk all the way back, and this cannot be undone once chosen.
- Permadeath: Party members in Taisho Adventure will be gone if killed in combat... except for the ever annoying Norika. Try to get her killed on purpose and you'll have to pay for her hospital bills.
- Private Detective: Hero 7B in Taisho Adventure presents himself as an "Adventurer Detective" who goes on both treasure hunts and crime investigations for his clients.
- Porn Stash: Hero 7 has erotic magazines and videos hidden around in his bedroom. More than one scene has him trying to keep his mom or love interests from finding them.
- Powers as Programs: The same inventory system from 3 is used to build a Baseball Doll in Taisho Adventure.
- Reality Warper: The Pokerangers are capable of altering reality. Best seen when you fail the final boss by destroying the school and Red then uses his powers to instantly rebuild it.
- Relationship Values:
- You need to befriend your classmates, or else they won't have the confidence to challenge the Pokerangers towards the end of the story.
- Getting high values with the love interests is mandatory for their storylines. Of note is that updates on Mao's values are hidden in her normal dating events. Even after hooking up with Mao, a friendship value over 80 is need to get a super skill from her.
- The Reveal: The Pokerangers turn out to have a world-domination plot in the works and are Not Even Human, but rather beings born of belief that went mad for justice out of a lack of purpose. Red in particular is implied to be a doppelganger of Hero 7 himself, based on a sketch the boy drew years before.
- Samus Is a Girl: Ranger Black is Mao Serizawa, and not that one transfer student that shows up after Black is first seen.
- Secret Character: On the New Game Plus shop, you can enable Mao's questline for 10 points. She's actually pretty important for the story, and this starts a trend of Pawapoke installments having much of their story and references to previous games unavailable at first.
- Sequential Boss: If you unlock the fight against the giant Horuhisu in Taisho Adventure, then you'll fight it right after the standard final boss, with no healing.
- Shout-Out: One of the rival teams
during the Koshien tournament in Koshien Hero is from "Rokuman Academy". Their captain Eguze is an expy of MegaMan.EXE and if you view the list of players in his team you'll find references to several Capcom characters like Ryu, Arthur and Nina. This was around the time Capcom and Konami collaborated by crossing Mega Man Battle Network 4: Red Sun and Blue Moon over with Boktai. - Sound Test: Available for the first time. Beat Koshien Hero once to unlock it on the Gallery. Annoyingly, there's no visual indication once it has been unlocked. Just press up and down on the ? button to switch between songs.
- Status Effects: Several to taint your Koshien Hero run, including:
- Lovesickness randomly causes Hero 7 to waste turns dating.
- "Red Mark" adds a chance of Hero 7's teacher forbidding him from training.
- Superboss: Some optional missions in Taisho Adventure end with particularly powerful bosses, including Toshio-kun the giant frog-scorpion.
- Surprisingly Creepy Moment: The Game Over where the Pokerangers brainwash the Hanamaru team to keep their mouths shut is presented as a distorted crayon drawing of them playing ball captioned with "HAPPINESS", in a mockery of the various welcoming screens that open most of the main Power Pros series. This is the signature scene of the game and it was featured and merchandised for the adaptation of the scenario in Live Powerful Pro Baseball Mobile even though that game isn't nearly as dark as the Pocket spinoffs.
- Timed Mission:
- You need to have a high enough friendship with the rest of the Hanamaru team towards the end of Koshien Hero to start the "Rebellion" path, but ending up on the "Submission" path doesn't result in a game over or anything.
- Taisho Adventure gives you 200 days to get and keep the money counter over at least 5000, though you actually need 10000 to clear the story without penalties. Succeeding enables the final mission on Day 200. Every mission costs a certain amount of days, so be careful not to skip the Baseball Doll contest on Day 199 since it gives extra money and can unlock the True Final Boss.
- Token Good Teammate: Most of the Pokerangers are obssessed about justice to the point of engineering incidents to solve. Black, however, is born with no knowledge of anything for some reason and learns to focus on protecting people instead.
- True Final Boss: To fight the giant Horuhisu in Taisho Adventure, you must score at least 90 points at the Baseball Doll competition.
- Unexpected Gameplay Change:
- You can challenge 4 different minigames in Koshien Hero if you want. As the difficulty increases with every minigame cleared, make sure to tackle the puzzle and math ones first.
- The final boss fight against the Pokerangers is a rail shooter.
- Vague Age: Averted with Hero 7B, which is unusual for an Inner Success protagonist. If he dies, we see "1903-1923'' marked on the memorial statue Yuda makes for him.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Dr. Tessai Kurono has an Obviously Evil appearance and wants to Take Over the World, but actually means well. He romanticizes "evil" as something not bound to rules and tells the protagonist that everything valued in modern society from science to human rights and once considered wrong and had to be hard fought for.
- Work Off the Debt: Hero 7B in Taisho Adventure must earn between 5000 to 10000 or above in cash in 200 days, or he'll be forced into Indentured Servitude.
