Darumeshi Sports Store is weird and awesome ⊟

You might have missed this if you didn’t catch the Direct presentation for Japan last week, but this is one of Nintendo’s most interesting eShop titles, even if it looks like a straightforward baseball minigame collection.

StreetsAhead provides this description for the free-to-play game released in Japan last week:

“The game starts by entering Darumeshi Sports Store run by Inuji Darumeshi, a 10 year-old dog (56 in human years) and former professional baseball player. … Inuji is in a bad place – his wife has left him and his store is failing. Children no longer want to play his beloved sport of baseball, instead choosing to play inside. But Inuji had an idea – he went to Hontendo (the game specifically differentiates it from Nintendo) to get a ‘4DS’ and some baseball games to sell. Gosh darn it, if the kids aren’t going to play baseball outside, they damn well will on their 4DS. For listening to his story his gives you a 4DS and a demo of one of the baseball games.”

You can buy extra minigames for ¥400 yen each ($4), but you can also talk the shopkeeper’s price down by doing him favors, like giving him eggs or letting him use your nose hair trimmers – you get these by completing challenges in the game.

As you can see in the official trailer and NintenDaan’s first look, it’s a very silly, WarioWare-esque game – check out the pitching machines in suits!