Little League Baseball: Championship Series

Little League Baseball: Championship Series, known in Japan as Koushien (甲子園) in Japan, is a baseball game developed for the Famicom and NES by SNK, and published by K Amusement in Japan in 1989, and by SNK in North America in 1990. Koushien is based on a baseball tournament in Japan for highschool-aged athletes that culminates at Koushien stadium. Little League Baseball is essentially to Koushien what R.B.I. Baseball is to Namco's Family Stadium: structurally similar, but for some major graphical and localization-related changes necessitated by the differences between the two markets.

In the North American version of the game, the player gets a choice between 16 Little League Baseball teams from around the world, ranging from Texas and Puerto Rico to Chinese Taipei. Single-player mode consists of a mandatory international tournament while two-player mode allows for some exhibition play. Every game is six innings long, excluding extra innings, but games may end early by mercy rule if a team is ahead by 10 or more runs. Players can be taken out of the game and placed back in like real Little League Baseball. Unlike Little League Baseball, there is no rule making it mandatory for everyone to have at turn at bat and in the field for at least two innings.

A power analysis screen rates each team in batting, pitching, running, and defense. There is a relative amount of freedom for pitchers and batters in the game, giving them nearly full movement in the batter's box and the pitcher's mound. Each player is given an overall rating which ranges from 1 (awful) to 5 (perfect). This game has the same engine as the NES video game Baseball Stars. While the actual cartridge is still common today through video game collectors and Internet hobbyist sites, the original game box and instruction manual have an "average" level of rarity and are harder to find.