Kind of a weird game with a concept I doubt I'll ever see done in anything else again. One half of the game is the actual gameplay, while the other half is focused on Rusty's store. Here, you can buy a bunch of different baseball themed games packed with fun challenges reminiscent of those old Wii Sports challenge mini-games. Rusty's Real Deal Baseball is a unique free to play game that asks you to literally haggle down the prices of these games, which leads to a lot of witty dialogue as you slowly push Rusty further and further. Obviously there is a limit to how far down you can haggle the game prices, but it's a really charming and cute gimmick that's made a lot more fun by Rusty himself. I haven't gotten too far in but I love the writing in this game, it's gotten a fair few chuckles out of me. Unfortunately this aspect of the game can never truly be experienced as it was intended to be anymore, because the 3DS eshop has shut down. This means if you can find the DLC for the game and get it working, it'll skip over a ton of the story that you would normally get to see after buying the games. So a huge portion of the game & the overall charm has been ripped out. The games themselves are fun, pretty addictive as well, testing your focus and timing & having a lot of content to them as well. Really wish this game could get a sequel or re-release, but even then we'd see the same issue again after the Switch eShop inevitably shuts down one day.

cool little story. also yes, you can still see the whole story after the eshop closure:

- download game and DLC
- play as normal
- buy the game
- if you get the successful purchase animation, continue
- if you get an error that game is no longer available, move on. you won't miss out on any dialogue
- go to home and try to open game
- if you had a successful purchase, you should be able to play as normal
- if you get some form of error: quit game and reinstall the DLC. it will work again when you boot it up

also works with the non-story games. keep haggling and don't just buy the games at full price just because you won't be spending money anymore.

The haggling is more of a gimmick than you'd probably expect (the game really doesn't feel like it expects you to pay full price, though it's designed in such a way that I'm sure some unwitting kids certainly did), and doesn't add that much to this. The game kinda cheaps out on Rusty having any kind of an actual tragic background too.

But! The baseball minigames are actually a lot of fun! Think WarioWare meets Wii Sports or something. Lots of twitch reflexes, specifically with baseball visual cues. They're surprisingly kinda difficult too, or at least some of them! Shame the motion controlled ones don't work too well on a handheld, but like, they nailed the feel and the timing windows here.

A legit fun minigame collection with a huge amount of Nintendo Polish, that generated discussion and often derision because of its odd take on microtransactions - where everyone conveniently forgot to mention that the game A) leads you to getting the lowest price on nearly every game fairly easily provided you play the ones you buy a little before buying the next one, and B) that price is usually around $1.50, meaning the full price of the game will be, for nearly every player - and these are players who clearly like the game if they're buying everything, not people being cajoled in some way - 15 bucks.

And you're getting a fair amount of content for this. You only need to buy six minigames to complete the weird, somewhat endearing story about this complete failure of a dog/dad, and there's 3 extra minigames along with one final thingy that lets you do something else (look it up if you want to know). Each game has 25 basic challenges (5 levels each of 5 sub-games - microgames? Did Wario trademark that? Probably, knowing him - themed around the same aspect of baseball) and 25 advanced challenges. The higher levels of even the normal challenges are pretty tough, and the advanced ones are advanced as heck. If you like a hand-eye-coordination challenge but don't want to play a rhythm game, this is the game for you. If you like playing the game a lot you'll be tackling up to 450 challenges there, plus the 2 unlockable high score challenges for each game - 468, then. Worth 15 bucks in my opinion.

The game isn't perfect, I think the minigames are fun enough that the presentation surrounding them could have been more robust - even just a little 3D world to run around in like in NintendoLand - and you should get more for winning some of the tougher challenges. What you get isn't great - just 3D Dioramas, and costumes for the high score modes. But, this game is all about the love of the game of baseball, so I guess that's what the devs expect you to have when you play it. You're not doing this for dioramas or costumes for your Mii. You're doing this to hear the crack of the bat, or the...whatever the noise is when the ball lands in your glove. It's a very "NIntendo" thing, and they wanted people to know that this is what the game is about so much that they mentioned it when they first revealed it in a Nintendo Direct.

It's not gonna be for everyone. And maybe there are some poor kids out there who are somehow spending more on this game than they should be. But for what it generally is, a 15-dollar baseball-themed minigame collection, damn did I have fun. I hope we get to see Rusty and the fam again, someday, somewhere.

You can't even legally play the games you are trying to "buy" anymore thanks to the eShop's closure, so rather than make all the minigames free, the game just gives you the story of the game for free, but keeps you from accessing the games since you technically never paid for them, which is a bummer as I don't think Nintendo would lose much sleep by letting players preserve the experience of this game in full if they downloaded it before but haven't finished it.

The haggle system is a neat idea and the game's real inventive with it, making the monetization method a core part of the character while not using a made-up currency, which I don't think I've seen done anywhere else. (even if you still pay $15 or so if you wanted to play the whole thing so Nintendo still makes a profit) I don't remember much of the games themselves, other than that they were fine. But Rusty is the star here, and while his world can't function the way it used to anymore, everyone will remember this game for him and his haggling mechanics.

One of the many strange little oddities that Nintendo developed for the 3DS. The baseball minigames that make up the brunt of the content here are amusing in the way that most well-made minigames are - which is to say, they are fun right up until they aren't. What's really memorable here, though, is the sad-sack dog who runs the sporting store, and the way he shamelessly haggles in an effort to convince the player to spend real-life money buying more minigames. Yes, that's right - Nintendo effectively programmed a Nintendo marketing employee into their game. It's actually not as obnoxious as it sounds, especially given that there's a fairly charming mini-narrative draped over the capitalism. More to the point, this is all largely a moot point given that the 3DS shop has gone the way of the dodo. Still, yet another notable instance of Nintendo ingenuity, even if this one is largely dedicated to clawing a few more bucks out of your wallet.

Rusty's Real Deal Baseball is one of the more fascinating 3DS eShop games I've played. This was released before they normalized microtransactions into their games via mobile devices, and what we have here is an experimental free-to-play game using real-life money to progress through the story. It's essentially a minigame collection where you pay for various baseball games, and play them to your heart's content

The story involves Rusty Slugger; a retired baseball player who now operates a sports shop. However, life hasn't been going so well for Rusty since his wife left him. He has to deal with taking care of 10 identical children while dealing with a struggling business. The game's plot is simplistic but enjoyable to watch through, and I think the ending of the game was really sweet

This is where your Mii comes into play. You start with a demo of Bat & Switch given to you by Rusty, but after that, everything will have to be paid for with real money. Now, this is where we get into the meat and potato of the game, the haggling mechanic. The games cost $4 each, but you can get Rusty to lower the price by negotiating, and this contributes to the game's plot. A donut will instantly get Rusty to engage in conversation, hear about his struggles, give him advice, and give him the specific items that can be earned from playing games to help get that sweet sweet discount if done correctly. Not all of these games are tied to the story however, but you can use another method to bargain the price down, and that's through discount tickets. Like with the story objects, you earn these by playing the minigames, and they can range from $0.30 off to half off. Playing the available baseball minigames was fun. While I haven't gotten to every minigame yet, I enjoyed what I've played so far

Rusty's Real Deal Baseball was a unique free-to-play game that I'm glad I got to experience before the eShop closes. I'm surprised Nintendo never did something like this again with their free-to-play games on Switch, but unfortunately, since the 3DS eShop is now closed, there's no legal way to purchase the games anymore, so I had to rush to get all of them. I'm sure modding the 3DS or emulating it via Citra will get past that issue, but it doesn't feel the same without officially paying for it

I hope this little 3DS game gets referenced in future video games someday

This is an all time great. So unsuspecting in its depth, Rusty’s Real Deal Baseball is a mini game collection wrapped in a family screwball dramedy starring a washed-up ex-baseball player, who was recently left by his wife, and his 10 children. The story is surprisingly sweet and pulled some laughs, but the real star of these interactions is the haggling system, a unique and (financially) rewarding gameplay mechanic that is unfortunately no longer possible due to the closure of the eshop. Through this system, you get to buy 10 minigames, though, with the 50 challenges per game that vary wildly in activity and difficulty, saying that you’re paying for just 1 minigame is really underselling it. And the baseball theme somehow ties it all together and completely works. A hidden gem that in so glad I got to play.