Let's CATCH is a quirky little game about playing catch developed in 2008 by Yuji Naka and his company Prope and published by Sega for the Nintendo Wii via WiiWare. It is loosely related to the minigame collection Let's TAP, also developed by Prope.
In Let's CATCH, a player and an NPC (or another player) take turns throwing and catching a baseball. By using the A and B buttons with motion controls, the player can throw the ball to their teammate, and by pressing the A and B buttons they can catch the ball on a return throw. The force with which the player throws the ball and the timing with which they catch it are graded, with better grades granting more points. The aim of the game is to get a high score while avoiding running out of throws, missing throws/catches, and reaching score checkpoints in time.
The main mode of the game is Story Mode, where the unnamed player plays catch with some local residents in the park. As the player and their companion play, the companion will gradually open up to the player and talk to them during the game. As Story Mode progresses, new characters of varying difficulties unlock, and a surprisingly sophisticated story about love and relationships in a small Japanese town begins to unfold.
In addition to the the main mode, the game also features more conventional "game" modes, including Nine Trial, where up to four players compete to knock out nine panels from a board with baseball throws, and Bomber Catch, a Hot Potato-style minigame where players play catch with a live bomb and aim to be the last one standing.
Let's CATCH features examples of:
- Achievements in Ignorance: The last level reveals that the protagonist unwittingly averted an alien invasion and the possible annihilation of Earth by showing the aliens the goodness in human hearts.
- Astral Finale: The final level of Story Mode takes place on the Moon.
- Bratty Half-Pint: Ai. She's more or less emotionally cut herself off from her father, Watanabe, and callously remarks that he should just get remarried if he misses his wife so much. When pressed on what she really wants instead of her mom, she claims that she'd rather have a cell phone.
- Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Let's CATCH is a game about playing catch.
- Likes Older Women: Ryota, a down-on-his-luck high school baseball player, voices his attraction to Misaki, a slightly older woman who works a secretary job at a nearby company.
- Lipstick Mark: Kobayashi ended up with a lipstick stain on his collar after a work party, leading to him getting into a massive fight with his wife and ultimately moving out of the house.
- Missing Mom: Watanabe's wife passed three years prior, leaving him as an only father for his daughter Ai. Her passing put a significant strain on their relationship, but Watanabe doesn't seem to mind all that much.
- New Work, Recycled Graphics: Several of the characters are pulled directly from promotional material for Let's TAP; Yuto and Ai's models in particular are on the back of the box.
- Old Save Bonus: Owning Let's TAP unlocks a few bonuses in Let's CATCH.
- Product Placement: Yuto plugs Let's TAP during an early talk.
- Relationship Values: Each character in Story Mode has a Friendship Gauge. Playing catch with them long enough and reaching specific lines of text grants a star and increases the Friendship level. Friendship also acts as checkpoints, determining which line of text they restart from if a session ends early, and maxing Friendship with a character unlocks a new character or expands interations with a previous one.
- Rejected Marriage Proposal: Misaki is in a relationship with a man she graduated college with, but she notes that their relationship has gone on "a little too long". She reveals that he ended up proposing to her, but she wasn't ready to accept and turned him down. Further complicating matters is that she has a crush on one of her co-workers, and a married man at that...
- Silent Protagonist: The player's character does not "speak" any lines, but they do communicate with their companion via Parrot Exposition.
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: During Story Mode, spending enough time with a companion will prompt a UFO to show up and start hovering around; striking it with your baseball counts as a missed throw. Bizarrely, absolutely no one comments on this and continues talking (and throwing) as if it wasn't there.
- Used to Be a Sweet Kid: Watanabe says that Ai was happy and always smiling when she was young, but ever since her mom passed away she's been hard to get on her good side. Playing catch with her later reveals that she's a bit of an ungrateful brat.
- When You Coming Home, Dad?: Yuto's father is noted to be a heavy workaholic, to the point where he moved out of the house for work purposes. Yuto only sees his dad once a month, if he's lucky. Playing catch with Kobayashi reveals that he didn't move out for work purposes; while he is a workaholic, he actually moved out due to relationship troubles with his wife.
