Ninja Baseball Batman ("Baseball Hand-to-Hand Fighting League Man"), is a 1993 beat 'em up developed and published by Irem in association with its North American division Irem America exclusively as an arcade game.
The game allows up to four players to play simultaneously. Each player chooses from among four characters. The object of the game is to recover various artifacts stolen from the Baseball Hall of Fame, a task prescribed to them by the Commissioner of Baseball. Each stage takes place in several parts of the United States, while a boss character will appear at the end of each stage, which requires player(s) to defeat it. Like in most arcade video games, whether the player fails or beats the game, he or she will type in three letters or other text characters in to record their score.
Like Irem's previous beat 'em up arcade Undercover Cops, Ninja Baseball Bat Man features playable characters with several different fighting moves performed by inputting several commands using an 8-way joystick and two buttons (attack and jump), including "smart bomb" or "screen zapper" moves that sacrifices health in order to annihilate every enemy on the screen. The game also allows players to perform combos, throws and dash attacks against several enemies. When a player's health bar flashes red, more moves can be performed as long as the player does not restore or completely lose health. There are items throughout the game that include American and Japanese food for restoring health, alternate weapons such as baseballs and shurikens, or items that call cheerleaders to either obliterate enemies on screen or drop a large amount of food. There are also mini-games after each boss before the final one is defeated.
During its release in 1993, despite being one of the top arcade hits of Japan while receiving good reviews from critics, when compared to the sales of other kits sold at the time, it sold poorly in the Far East and especially North America. Of the 1042 units sold, only 43 units were sold in North America, making Ninja Baseball Batman quite rare. Despite all of this, the popularity of the arcade emulator created four years later in 1997 titled MAME caused Ninja Baseball Bat Man to gain more popularity than the arcade game's original release.