Winnie the Pooh's Home Run Derby is (still) a masterpiece of game design

I've got a couple other blog posts in the works but instead, I'm playing Winnie the Pooh's Home Run Derby again, all because it got brought up in reference to a PS2 Piglet game with dutch angles that's been making the rounds. Also I'm in a self-loathing spiral and I figured I could torture myself to feel something.

I'm not gonna give you the whole history of this meme game, you can look it up. I will also refrain from repeating too many memes, funny as I admit they still are. Despite its notoriety coming from its surprising difficulty for a random flash kids game, I've always been of the belief that HRD (Home Run Derby) is extremely well designed for what it is. Its a very simple game, but in its simplicity we see a masterclass in pacing and a challenge curve that's perfectly set up to fuck with the player and leave a lasting impression. Its no surprise this game went viral once it was found, just any poorly thought out hard game wouldn't have cut it. The creators probably had no idea it would get this much attention, but without a doubt, they knew what they were cooking when designing this game, its so very deliberate in the mechanical story its telling.

Title Screen & Upgrades

Kids, read the manual

The game starts with a basic title screen, lean menu, and cute music theme (its incredibly short loop can get a bit maddening, but I digress). I'd say its quaintness is disarming, but if you're playing this its cause you've heard of its reputation, or are revisiting the wound. Even then, I feel like there's always a bit of bargaining at this stage, is it, is it really that bad? How hard could it be, I'm a gamer, and the years only pile on more expertise after all.

Most of us skip "How to Play", the game is dead simple to understand and easy to intuit at a glance. The sweet spot of Pooh's bat, marked in green, follows after your mouse cursor, a left click has Pooh swing the bat. On the pitcher side is one of Pooh's friends, and at the top left the UI indicates the target home runs, the current home run count, and the remaining balls. There's one goal, hit home runs. Baseball trimmed to its universal appeal, its single, non-convoluted aspect: hitting a ball with a bat and watching it fly. Luckily Pooh's got a pretty strong swing, so with the right timing getting distance isn't usually an issue. For the most part, its a simple timing challenge, we can get to the nuance later.

At level select we're greeted with a single stage, Stage 1: Eyeore. There's also a button back to the Main Menu, and one for the Status screen where you can spend points on Upgrades.

Right, we gotta talk about the upgrades.
I suppose some history is in order, its important context.

HRD was originally brought to the attention of adult gamers and internet denizens on Japanese image boards. As such, when word finally came overseas and it had its viral moment on our image boards, the link that got passed around and most people played with was of Diney's Japanese website. Because of this, most people who played it at the time couldn't read any of the game's menus and made the game even harder by playing without any upgrades. With the game being so bare bones and intuitive, no one had reason to even expect an upgrade system. The English version was eventually found, buried somewhere in Disney's American site, and word got out of the upgrade system, making a lot of people very salty. This is, admittedly, very funny, but its lead to many denouncing the use of any upgrades as "cheating" and not the "true" HRD experience (sounds like souls gamers lol). I reject this line of thinking, and value some of my sanity, so I'm usually not in the mood for even more of a challenge run, and use the upgrades sparingly. Which is good, I think the game is also very clearly designed around the upgrade system and its difficulty curve accounts for it, not to mention, its far, far from a get-out-of-jail-free card.

Also... I know I just presented that well established bit of internet lore, but I have doubts this was entirely the fault of the Japanese version? Like I said above, its very easy to absent-mindedly skip past the tutorial, which would've revealed the existence of the upgrade system, with pictures, so even a player who doesn't speak the language could realize something was up. A bit of the fault lies in the game's UI, for making the button to the upgrade screen so low key, that even in the English version, the vague "Status" moniker makes no real indication that your single lifeline in this hellish world lies beyond it. The points count at the end of every stage seem superfluous too, the game is keeping track of high scores, so what? Suffice to say, I feel like even if the English version had been the standard, most people would've gone various stages without upgrades, or never once knowing of them. That's still no reason to forego them though, the tutorial is there, one of two buttons at the start. Some kids probably read it, flash games vary wildly in how they play, you usually check these things. Surely a lot of Japanese players knew, and the game's reputation still built up there, and there had to be English players who got bored and clicked around, can't have been much of a secret for long. This is maybe, at the end of the day, a skill issue on the part of a lot of people, not exploring every option the game might have, specially when it has so few.

But hey, if we had to dock points, we can dock points for this lack of clarity, I suppose. Most of what I'll talk about still applies without upgrades, it just ratchets the challenge and despair exponentially.

Anyway, we start the game with zero points and upgrades, and hit Stage 1.

Stages 1 - 3, Eeyeore, Lumpy and Piglet

Oh, okay, this is manageable.

Eeyore's stage is the simplest and easiest, naturally, but generally we still have to find our bearings. We might be caught off-guard a little, our dear Pooh-bear is painfully slow without upgrades, lagging behind the cursor. Eeyore's pitch is straight forward and consistent in speed, but like everyone in the game, the exact path it takes is randomized a bit each throw, so we still have to juggle positioning on the fly with a slippery mouse and timing correctly. This is stage one though, so its a small variance, just enough that you can't just park your mouse. The ball, even here, is fairly fast, the click has to be predictive and account for its speed, trying to react when the ball and sweet spot overlap isn't recommended. That said, at this stage you might still get a hit, you just risk a foul ball. Put it all together though, and you probably aren't making it through on your first try! The game has some bite, okay, fine. But once you've made your adjustments and gotten used to it, its no big deal, you'll probably make it through the very lenient quota on your second try. Well, its stage 1, after all. The timings will probably get tighter, the balls faster, and the quotas more demanding, but how bad could it be? You can see how some might get tripped up, but there's only so many ways to mix up a pitch. (says the bitch who doesn't play or watch baseball)

We get some points, and we can finally get some upgrades. Our options are Power, Contact, and Speed. They upgrade how far the ball flies, how big our sweet spot is, and how fast Pooh moves, pretty straight forward. As you upgrade the costs increase, but so do the point rewards in later stages. Each stat starts with the same cost, but they all scale differently, Speed is the cheapest, followed by Contact and Power. That's pretty lenient, frankly, speed is our biggest hurdle starting out, a bigger hitbox could only be good, and we haven't had issue with power so far. We do some upgrades, maybe we keep it even at first, then dump the surplus on speed. We hit Stage 2, Lumpy, in a much better position than we did Eeyore, a little bit of speed goes a long way. We knock it out of the park, literally, with no trouble. This compounds coming into Stage 3, Piglet, we barely even notice if much has changed outside the quotas and ball counts. Was Piglet faster maybe? I think the angles the ball comes in at got expanded maybe, did he mix up the speeds he threw at? Its hard to tell, we're getting better at this regardless of the upgrades. Our play isn't perfect, there's missed balls, foul balls at frustrating angles, but the quota isn't hard to meet if you lock in, you usually reach it halfway into the stage, the rest are just extras for points.

Well, it is just the start, but HRD should probably mix it up a little right about now.

Stage 4, Kanga & Roo

fuck

Cerberus greets you at the gates of the underworld.

What the fuck was that pitch? Kanga's curve ball speeds past the bat before we have time to register what's going on, the delayed swing misses, of course. Its always at this point that I remember, so suddenly and very clearly, what game I'm playing, what suffering looks like. Right here I realized I had to write about it. This is where HRD starts in earnest.

Okay, okay, this is fine, can't expect to get it right the first time, lets analyze this. Kanga's pitch is doing this fucky up and down wave motion, the game is 2D and seen from the top down, its visually simulating a Y axis, but the ball is still coming at us fairly straight. Its maybe just a trick of the eye, an illusion, a visual mixup for the most part, we just have to time it right-

Strike

Shit. Did that like, go through it?? does the height affect the hitbox, or is it just fucking with my eyes and timing? I don't honestly know. Its okay, we just have to lock in- Wait why is that ball so slow, hold on when do I hit that-

Strike

I wanna go back to Piglet.

Kanga introduces our first real mixup with no fanfare. Not only does the curve mess with our perception and prediction, she does a far better job at randomizing her throws, the range between the slowest throw and the fastest one is huge, the slow ball practically floats through the air. A slower ball should, in theory, be easier to time: you just have to line it up and react- the opposite of what we've been doing, which is rely on anticipation and prediction. We not only have to manage our positioning on the fly like usual, we have to be ready to react and adjust accordingly to the randomized speeds, and hope the curve doesn't fuck with our swing. The mental stack's getting overloaded. It starts to dawn in, the growing quota and ball count are a war of attrition, there's no real respite, every ball is the same guessing game until the count reaches zero. Hope you get enough home runs to get through.

We exit the batting arena rattled and bruised. We're not giving up here though, we got points for that still, maybe a bigger sweet spot would help? Can't hurt at the very least. We go back in for more, now ready, and manage pretty well. A lot of these balls are straight forward pitches like we thought, specially the fast ones, we love the fast ones. We adjust to the slow ones, miss most of them, but get enough to skew the percentages on our favour. Don't get me wrong, its still tighter than we'd like, the quota is just shy of half the balls, the misses feel particularly painful, we're starting to see what regular Hits (not home runs) look like. Nevertheless, we make it within the 2nd or 3rd try, perseverance pays off.

With bated breath, we head onwards to the next stage.

Stage 5, Rabbit

I'm starting to think this isn't regular baseball

Rabbit's throws start off slow, then suddenly speed up halfway through their trajectory. Its clear now that the Hundred Acre Wood is not bound by the laws of physics, and anything goes. That, and our friends seem to have access to some deep magics.

As expected, the pitch catches us off guard, but we saw something coming, so its not too bad. The first pitch is always a discovery and adjustment phase. As a matter of fact, by the new standards we've found ourselves, Rabbit is a relief of all the tension we just built up after our first real hurdle. Like any good interest curve, there's peaks and valleys. His throws are, in a sense, all fast throws, just a bit delayed. We can handle these once we accommodate and account for it. There's still misses, but its hard to tell if they're from the mixup or just the general fuzziness of the game. The length of the matches and number of balls is growing, though it works in our favour, this might just be our record of home runs (Which means more points, nice). You'll probably get through it on your first try, I did this time around. Rabbit is by all means surmountable, he could've been stage 4 if they were going for a strict linear progression.

This is the calm before the storm.

We carry on refreshed, and maybe even a bit confident. Still, from this point we're approaching each new encounter with a mixture of dread and morbid curiosity, its anyone's guess what lies beyond. Regardless of actual difficulty, HRD has already left its impact.

Stage 6, Owl

I should not have come here, why didn't I listen

Oh for fuck's sake.

Hit
Foul Ball
Hit
Strike

what the actual fuck

The ball bunts pathetically a couple feet away. It flies off into the river. It looks like its going far, then lands just short of going over the bush fence. Very often, the bat misses it completely.

Owl's pitch is actually infernal. The accursed sphere defies all logic as it zig zags while it speeds towards the bat. There's only so many trajectories you can fit in 2D space, but we see here how something so simple can elicit soul crushing despair. Our brains are fried as we desperately try to process how we're supposed to deal with it, all in vain. Pathetic swing after swing, we lose our composure and all but give up the run early in. Did you notice the ball count at the start though? 35 goddamn balls, Owl's not letting us go until every one of them is through, he does not care for the state of your wounded pride.

Retries are free, and we have an eternity, so make the best of each throw, that's all you can do, Pooh-bear.

Which is to say, lets compose ourselves and analyze again. Owl's... angle ball(?) has with it the usual variance, like speed, and the angle it comes in at. The zig zag also varies though, the width of it. Sometimes it comes in pretty tight, which harkens back to Kanga & Roo (simpler times...) and acts like a straight pitch for the most part, specially with our expanded sweet spot. The problem is that just as often, the zig zag is pretty wide, but still changes trajectory often enough that predicting it is out of most of us's reach, it just means that whatever positional calculus we had is out the window, and we're lucky if we get a foul ball or bunt hit out of it. Do we aim for the center? The side and hope it turns toward our bat? The full, X and Y range of our movement crashes in, do we stick to the top or bottom?? Once again, now more than ever, the mental stack is in shambles. Unlike Kanga & Roo though, we don't really have an escape, we understand the problem, but see no way out.

...Actually, is the width changing, or is just a natural part of the zig zag expanding as the ball comes in, combined with the variable speed?? The result is still the same, our bat swings through air fruitlessly more often than we'd like, and we doubt our perception.

We are getting some home runs in though, that's a start, if we can tighten our play somehow we might make it through a subsequent try- what's the quota again?
19, a whopping 54% of our already inflated ball count. ohno. The days of failing grades skirting by are over. We have to do consistently well, more than ever, to get through. Whatever fragment of composure we regained melts as quickly and painfully as it was summoned, this is dire, we're getting desperate.

The round ends, and we start to bargain. There has to be something we can do, some sort trick somewhere. Is there a strategy? A spot we can hover over? Does he have a tell?? Well, first off, lets get some upgrades, yea? Surely that'll help.

A dark wind washes over us though, and instantly we wish it hadn't. The thought is impossible to take back, we sit at the status screen trying in vain to ignore it.

...Are the upgrades even helping?

H-have... have we reached the point of diminishing returns? Yes, upgrades helped coming off of stage 1 into 2, but that was a lifetime ago, have they actually done much so far? Its...hard to tell, in retrospect. There's only so much Speed we really need; its true, if we move the mouse cursor fast enough, Pooh still lags behind. That said, we generally find it best to be still when making a swing. If we're at the point of making such wild, sweeping positional adjustments on reaction mid-throw, chances are the ball is already lost. Speed helps us getting into position before and as the ball is thrown, and for that we're seemingly all but set at this point, and have been for a while.

What about Power? The most expensive of the upgrades, should we have been funnelling more points into it? Once again, its hard to tell. We have the occasional hit that's inches away from a home run, but would more power have helped? It seems more likely that simply hitting the ball at a better angle and timing would've done it, Pooh's never actually had trouble hitting home runs, provided the swing lands well.

Contact- our beloved, faithful sweet spot. A bigger hit spot can only ever help, right?? But like all things, there's surely a limit. The area we needed to hit was pathetic before, and it grew, but it doesn't seem to have grown much lately, and it worked okay at Stage 1, unupgraded. As is the case with the others, simply improving on this area can never do enough to account for bad play, the balls come fast enough that's its doubtful we couldn't have hit a lot of these home runs with a smaller sweet spot-

This time, the thought crashes over

W-wait- what if Contact is making things worse?? Could it be, by expanding our home run sweet spot, we're also expanding our Hit (again, not Home Run) spot, opening ourselves up for more and more funny angles, bunt hits, and foul balls? Is a smaller sweet spot a more concentrated sweet spot, and therefore better? Would HRD do this to us??? Is that intentional, is it an oversight, is it even the case?! We don't know, we can't know, its a freaking flash game for kids!! We're doing rain dances for all we know. What difference does it even make, we can't take the upgrades back! Would we, go delete our browser cookies, restart the game and take a gamble on this guess? Waste time we could be spending practicing Owl?? This is the bat we have now, pray we haven't cursed it.

All of that is moot too, because even if the upgrades did work, we realize we've hit diminishing returns on their cost. We're now close to the halfway point on them, and they've become prohibitively expensive, relative to how many points we get out of a failed Owl run. If, and that's a big if at this point, if the upgrades still have benefit, would it be worth it to grind for them? Go back to Rabbit and his easy home runs and rack up points? There's no way, once again, that time would be better spend bashing away at the wall that is Owl, every run could be the one that grants us release, and we can surely get better at this through effort... right?

Our one lifeline fades away, maybe it was a mirage the entire time. You're left with the reality of your sisyphean task, its just you, the bat, and the ball, as it always has been. Its a Home Run Derby, you just have to hit home runs, its as simple as that.

Owl, and the rest of the game from now on, will take multiple attempts, its just the nature of it. You shift you frame of thinking and strap in for the tedium of it all, ball after ball, swing after swing. Don't let the emotions get to you, pride is the enemy.

You peer over to the top left, "hey, I'm doing pretty well, that's a good pace". You've cursed the run, and have to flail and watch as "I just need a couple more home runs, I have of plenty balls left" turns into "I have to hit every last ball or I'm not making it", and ultimately ends in expletives.

Owl is the great filter, its at this point that a majority of the challengers throw in the towel. The friction so far was cute, with surprising hitches, but the time investment was still minimal. You're meant to get this far, to come to learn that this game is here to fuck with you. Do you take it up on this, and let it?

Winnie the Pooh's Home Run Derby's infamous reputation isn't just the result its difficulty, its in the nature of said difficulty. Its in this escalation, in these perfectly timed, absurd, gravity defying pitches, and what they evoke in the player, that the game shines. It earns its infamy.

If you decide to stick through, you can make it through Owl. The entire game is beatable, plenty have done it, there's for sure harder, well designed, intentionally masocore games out there. Still, once you're done with Owl, how do you feel? Do you feel accomplished? relieved? Did you actually get better at this, or was it just a lucky run?

...Are you already dreading what's next?

Stage 7, Tigger

That's a stand, that's just a stand, he has a fucking Jojo's stand-

You find yourself, once again, in the batting position.

Tigger stands in front of you, preparing his first pitch.

You clench your bat/mouse (they are one and the same), ready for anything, ready to miss the first pitch.

The possibilities run through your mind, will it do circle loops? Maybe he'll expand on one of the previous pitches, fast, then slow? At this point you expect him to use the ball's trajectory to draw Pooh's face- your face, twisted in agony.

The ball comes your way.

A straight pitch?...

...

...

...

STRIKE

You blink once.

Twice.

...HHUH??

While you're paralyzed, the second ball is thrown.

Straight ahead, picking up speed.

And then.

...

Nothing.

Empty air.

A void where your heart used to be.

STRIKE

Your eyes did not deceive you.

EXCUSE ME?????

IS THAT FOR FUCKING REAL?!

HELLO???

The balls fly through the air, and halfway through, they just... vanish, gone, out of sight.

One frame they're there, the next they aren't.

You might laugh at the absurdity of it, if you still can.

HOW is he doing that?? forget the the laws of physics, this goes beyond even cartoon logic.

Your brain short-circuits as more balls are raptured.

The line has to be drawn somewhere, surely.

How are you expected to hit a ball that isn't there?!

The next ball comes in, and you dig your heels in. There's only one thing you think to do, the one thing you can do.

You swing your bat through empty air; if the ball is somehow still there, at the speed it was going, it should hopefully hit.

A sound rings out.

You feel that familiar vibration in your grip.

Contact.

The Ball, visible once again, is sent flying. If you've truly learned the ways of the bat, its a home run, otherwise, its at least confirmation the ball is still within this dimension.

...what the fuck, man

Tigger is a prank, a wonderful, hilarious one, and you're the butt of the joke. The fool that you are, assuming the ball would always be visible. Swing your bat wildly in panic, maybe it will help? Be glad you can still see it coming, and that its mostly a straight pitch. He could be doing much worse.

In fact, if you're good at this and keep your composure in check, you might find this to be another point of relief, like Rabbit. You should've built familiarity with predicting these balls by now. The game has carefully and graciously kept the possibility space confined around its core mechanic, the various pitches are wild and interesting visually, but they have more in common at the root than not. This is doable.

What's the count this time?

40 balls
28 home runs
70%

...this will still take a while. Whatever gains you make from the underlying simplicity of his pitch, they're balanced through the sheer increase in the quota. Lets not fully discount Tigger's 「 King Crimson 」 pitch, going in blind is still disorientating as fuck, and with a count like that its nothing short of demoralizing. You'd be surprised at how abyssmal your once reliable aim is when you have to extrapolate the position on top of the timing, thinking you lined up the shot just right, only to watch the ball hit the edge of your bat and miss its target.

Experiences vary wildly, I'm not trying to downplay Tigger. Fuck Tigger. I'm horrible at Tigger, everything I said is just theory, it works for some, does it work for you? Do you make it through with confidence, or do you curse this game as the tries pile up, the play time moving into an hour, or two, more than you'd ever expect of this kind of game. HRD has had its laughs.

The fucking ball turns invisible!!!

You can give up here, I usually do.

If you've made it this far, then I have to come clean, but you probably already knew.

I lied, back when I said HRD starts in earnest at Kanga & Roo. It doesn't even start at Owl.

No, there's two Winnie the Pooh's Home Run Derbys.

There's everything we've been talking about, the setup, the preamble, the prologue, the tutorial.

And then there's Christopher Robin.

Special Stage, Christopher Robin

Silly old bear

To say that Christopher Robin's reputation precedes him is an understatement. He might very well be one of gaming's most infamous final bosses.

He's well earned said reputation.

You click the special stage, and the numbers are shown on screen. These numbers will be ingrained into your soul.

50 balls
40 home runs
80%

Good Luck. Have Fun.

The batting music starts up once again. If you aren't sick of it yet, you will be in the coming hours. You'll probably switch it off at some point, and add in your own motivational anime theme. It doesn't actually help, but you need all the willpower you can get for the upcoming marathon.

What's his pitch?... Does it really matter at this point? With a count like that he could be throwing Eeyore's and it would still be a near perfect chore of a run.

I'm kidding, you'll notice very quickly, but I'll tell you.

Its actually kinda like that, his special pitch:

Its all of them.

Every single one.

All 7 pitches so far, he can do them all.

He will pick one out at random with every throw.

Surely, you've mastered these all by now, right?

They're all fair pitches, you got through them.

How hard could it be, you just have to adjust on the fly for each one.

For 50 balls.

And get 40 home runs.

Can you stay focused for that long?

Do you struggle with any of these? Did you find them only doable because they were all that were being thrown?

...Oh, did you miss one of the easy pitches? There's so many of these to pick from, and you still fumbled it. Hahaha, there goes that run.

The minutes turn into hours.

You lose count of your attempts.

Maxing out the upgrades brings you no joy.

Hours blend into days, days into weeks, years, decades.

Your mental stack is long buried under the sand.

Owl and Tigger fade away into the fog, a distant memory.

Its just you and me, until the end of time.

Strike. Foul Ball. Strike. Hit. Strike. Strike. Hit. Strike. Foul Ball. Home Run. Strike.

Try again, Pooh-bear.

Debrief

Okay, can I just say though, how fucking COOL is that? That's sick, that's fucking video games right there. Every pitch! He brings it all together. What a perfect climax, punchline, whatever you call it. Each one of these throws takes on such a particular character, its a meme, but I wasn't kidding about the stand comparison back with Tigger. They're like unique super powers that each of them carry, and Christopher Robin, the devil that he is, has mastery over all of them, like some fucking baseball avatar. What the fuck is that doing in this kinda game, or rather, this illustrates the sheer power of tried and true mechanical storytelling like this. It can elevate what is textually a simple, plotless kids game into an experience that invariably has people writing about it like its a fucking cosmic showdown.

One might say its disappointing that CR doesn't introduce a final, super fucked up pitch, but I disagree, this is great, this is perfect. Another pitch would've just been more of the same, just more of a chore. This is still a horrible, soul crushing challenge for sickos, but it carries with it the weight of the journey so far, every twist and turn. The simplicity of it is what makes it hit so hard. I've really been banging this drum lately of trusting simple joys to be good enough and I think this game exemplifies a lot of it. That it can, with so few moving pieces, elicit so much raw emotion, excitement and surprise. That ramp up through to Stage 7 is fucking, pitch perfect, the tension and release, the escalation. Of course this thing went viral. No fucking wonder its so memorable, and inspired so many memes.

I could've written about, and really upsold, the wacky contrast between the subject matter and the difficulty, but I truly think its all secondary to what the experience of playing it says and does. Yes, the contrast gets us all in the door, but that's maybe worth a giggle and a gawk without this kind of pacing to hold up the actual game.

I'm not interested in playing up the difficulty of it, I hope instead to have communicated the rollercoaster that is Winnie the Pooh's Home Run Derby.

If this amused you and you can spare it, you should like, give me money or something. Its getting tough out here.