Video game monster brings the heat with a sizzling fastball.

On Saturday, Japanese professional baseball’s Seibu Lions welcomed the visiting Chunichi Dragons to MetLife Dome in the town of Tokorozawa, just north of Tokyo. But regardless of which team fans were rooting for, it’s a safe bet that just about all of them were happy that a Killing Machine also made its way to the stadium that day.

Ordinarily, potentially fatal contraptions aren’t the sort of things you want running around any space where a crowd of people has gathered. However, this wasn’t just a killing machine, but a capitalized Killing Machine, as in the name of the recurring monster from the Dragon Quest video game series. It was also a particularly well-behaved one that apparently follows the “when in Rome, do as the Romans do” philosophy, because instead of being there to kill, it was there to play baseball, and threw out the ceremonial first pitch.

After introducing itself as “Killer Pitching Machine” via a text message on the stadium’s scoreboard, the monster from Dragon Quest showed it can by a monster on the mound too by hurling a 199-kilometer-per-hour (123.7-mile-per-hour) fastball to Lions catcher Komei Fujisawa.

The Killing Machine’s appearance was part of a cross-promotion between the Seibu Lions and mobile game Dragon Quest Walk. And just like pro ballplayers’ friends and family come out to the stadium en masse to cheer them on, a group of sports-loving Slimes took over a part of the stands.

https://twitter.com/Victory_Cyclone/status/1403736577172377609

As for the men in black surrounding the Killing Machine, they’re not doing Dragon Quest cosplay. They’re a team of kuroko, a sort of stagehand involved in traditional kabuki performances whose all-black outfits are taken as a sort of “pay them no mind” instruction, which theater-goers are generally happy to comply with. It is pretty unusual to see them in a sports setting, but Killing Machine made its first appearance in Dragon Quest II, back when the games’ enemies still didn’t have any animation in battle scenes, so it staying still while the kuroko help load up its ball is actually, in its own way, extremely loyal to the source material.

By the way, the Lions went on to win the game by a score of 7-3 and got off to an explosive start with six runs scored in the first inning, so maybe we’ll see more professional sports teams in Japan bringing out video game monsters to try and create a home-field advantage.

Source: YouTube/埼玉西武ライオンズ via IT Media
Images: YouTube/埼玉西武ライオンズ
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