Fighting Baseball on the SNES had some of the funniest names in gaming | Meet Mike Truck and Sleve McDichael

Grab your bats, and let's get on down to the park for some baseball. Invite your friends, people like Sleve McDichael and Bobson Dugnutt. Maybe ask Mike Truk if he'd like to come along too! It'll be a blast. Afterwards, we can go down to the stadium and watch Now York in the game.

As you have almost certainly noticed, these names are all fake. They're in the uncanny valley of American names, almost there but not quite. They come from the SNES (or Super Famicom) game Fighting Baseball, which released in 1994. Developed by High Score Productions and Visual Concepts, published by EA Sports in North America and Coconuts Japan, there was a major difference between two versions.

In North America, it was called MLBPA Baseball, licensed by the MLBPA (Major League Baseball Player's Association). This meant it could use real players in-game, and while the teams themselves had inaccurate names the league were referred to differently to how they are in real life, players were recognisable. This was not the case in Japan.

That's, presumably, part of the reason why the game's name changed, but it meant real player names could be used. The localisation team had to think of a solution. 

While we haven't been able to speak to the folks behind the Japanese version, Coconuts Japan ceased to publish games in 1999, playing the Japanese version gives a good idea of what was done: they just made up new names. Largemann

These aren't all of them, it's just the start: every team has their own selection of names that are just a bit too odd. Marquis Lchette of Boston, for example, is perhaps not the true player's name.

Footage on YouTube shows off just under a minute of the game, starting with batters Biry Dedorov and Jesse Kurimeau in Philedelpha v Toronto. There's very little footage of Fighting Baseball online, but if you want to see the licensed alternative, that's also available on YouTube.

One person on reddit, Gamblor29, managed to connect the dots for many of the names featured in the tweet above, and they generally seem to be real surnames with new first names, and a letter or two changed. Mike Truk is based on John Kruk, and Kevin Nogilny is just Alexander Mogilny. It all makes a lot of sense: close enough to be real, far enough to be incredibly silly.