Show HN: An 8-bit live gamecast for baseball

87 points - today at 4:44 PM


Hey HN, I built a website to watch live baseball games in an 8-bit broadcast. It takes live MLB data streams and converts them into near real-time pixel art gamecasts.

Been waiting to share this for when there’s actually a good slate of games happening since the site is pretty bare otherwise.

Here is today's schedule:

Mets @ Reds - 9:40am PDT https://ribbie.tv/watch/game/824503

Royals @ Nationals - 10:05am PDT https://ribbie.tv/watch/game/822721

Marlins @ Phillies - 10:05am PDT https://ribbie.tv/watch/game/823450

Tigers @ Astros - 11:10am PDT https://ribbie.tv/watch/game/824178

Padres @ Cardinals - 11:15am PDT https://ribbie.tv/watch/game/823044

..and another 14 games throughout the later day.

I'm still early on in this project, but I've tried to add little details with actual stadiums, day and night modes, between inning graphics and interstitials, live scoreboards, etc.

Would love any feedback and ideas. Thanks for checking it out!

Source

Comments

TheGoodBarn today at 6:07 PM
This is so cool, I love these little scoreboard projects. The artwork is also such high quality.

I am a big fan of the ESPN CDN data api and have made a few "scoreboards" of my own. Recently I polished a simple html one at: https://mlb.ope.cool/

But I will most definitely be reaching for yours and tossing it up on the TV's in the office, this is so cool

e28eta today at 5:52 PM
I don’t watch baseball (maybe a couple games a year), but I think it could use some sound / audio, so you can have it running while doing something else.

IDK if there’s an easy way for the average person to get a live audio broadcast feed from games, so maybe your target market would be listening to that instead.

I’m thinking it could use some sound effects, for balls, strikes, hits, etc. I only tuned in for a couple pitches and then it was between innings, so maybe the more significant events already have something, and I just wasn’t patient enough to experience them.

I was looking away when the last out of the inning happened (or maybe changing views?). Is there a display of what caused the out, and maybe an animation of the fielders coming into the dugout, or does it flash up the “between innings” screen pretty quickly?

It might be nice to have a significant event summary available somewhere. It feels hard to believe that this would catch someone’s attention well enough that they’re watching the whole thing, and without audio cues / replays, I know I wouldn’t be interested in watching it for any length of time.

vitorbaptistaa today at 5:40 PM
Amazing project! I'd love to see something like this for the football world cup. Maybe a FIFA 97 style?

I wonder if some kind of filter would work or we would need some data source. Looks much harder given the fast-paced nature of the game.

glenstein today at 5:57 PM
Amazing, and I love every pixel of it. We know the MLB is famously understanding with creative repurposing of their data, so I wonder what live data you are using and if the rationale for use is something like small scale hobby/fair use?

I know when it comes to historical data, projects like the Sean Lahman Database have to go through quite a bit of trouble to reproduce "clean room" versions of historical data that are legally fine to use. I have to imagine there's a lot of complications when it comes to live data for anything that even has a hint of being more than a hobby project.

austinallegro today at 5:32 PM
This is brilliant. Can you make a sub-game, Streets of Rage II beat em up that you can play when the benches clear in a real game? Perhaps have Mortal Kombat finishing moves when the managers are fighting the umpires?
mysterydip 06/06/2026
Love the look of this! Enjoyed watching a bit, will definitely have it on later.

One comment is, during “in between innings” when it was showing around the league and other stats, the text was really small on my phone. If possible I’d rather have it scrolling or switching between pages of data than trying to fit it on one screen. I get that on a tv or pc it’s probably the right size, so not sure if you’d want to spend the effort to have a separate view for small screens.

Urgo 06/06/2026
I'm not a sports person and other then going to a superbowl party really don't watch anything but this is really cool. I even put a game on the tv and was comparing it to the site. Very well done :) If there was some way to have live audio streaming in to hear what was going on while the screen animated it that'd make this perfect but I imagine that isn't really a thing that can be done.

Either way though, great job on this!

matv today at 6:11 PM
This is awesome!
ishjoh today at 6:06 PM
this is one of the coolest projects I've seen in a while. Great work.
uludag today at 6:00 PM
I'm not sure if this is just me but the mismatch in pixel sizes and inconsistent palette is very jarring. This would be more impressive if this actually matched the 8-bit aesthetic of like the NES.
ecommerceguy today at 5:43 PM
This is great! Thank you for coming up with this.

edit- First 2 plays I watched are back to back homers. Go Royals!

cm11 today at 5:01 PM
Awesome! Sometimes a thing conveys it was built with some love or intention. It's not restricted to fun/entertaining content, it can be Saas too. I'm talking more from how it looks and feels than necessarily what's going on in the backend, but I'm not really talking about graphics.
germanrabbit today at 4:47 PM
What a joy this is
fitsumbelay today at 5:24 PM
this f**ng rocks

Something about the way baseball itself is played seems to make recreations really satisfying -- like, more accurate? -- and fun compared to say, soccer hilights of matches on Youtube made with what looks like an EA soccer video game

I also really like the idea of recreating any type of event in this format. It's almost like photogrammetry but with as much creative intention as you have documentary. very awesome, very inspirational really

ninju today at 5:08 PM
When I choose "Full" view it should go to fullscreen view of the browser (hiding address bar, bookmarks, tabs, etc...)
kridsdale3 today at 5:37 PM
PEDANT ALERT:

This is clearly 16 bit.

k8o5 today at 6:01 PM
Very cool!
unstruktured today at 5:30 PM
very cool! maybe make a soccer one for world cup?
devrundown today at 4:47 PM
This is really cool! Would love a technical breakdown on how you put this together.
JMiao today at 5:11 PM
fun idea and gj execution, but the art looks like bad ai pixel art, at least on my screen. gives it that uncanny youtube music stream look.
SubiculumCode today at 4:58 PM
Do you have a video of past livecasts to gt a feel?
tiahura today at 5:50 PM
Awesome.

do the mlb streams flag a challenge?

vrtnis today at 5:23 PM
Incredible work! Do you have any plans to add sound effects synced to in-game events, or maybe even TTS-generated commentary? That could make the experience feel even more dynamic and immersive.
apollo_orbit today at 5:00 PM
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