Game Boy Advance Game (GBA)

Game Rating

Jan 19, 2017 Backyard Baseball, geared towards kids 5-12 (or older), puts a cute face on America’s all-time favorite pastime – baseball. This kid-centric title from Humongous features simple gameplay, nice cartoony animations and plenty of bright colors to go with them.

The neighborhood kids want to play baseball and create their own league! Play with your neighbors and prove that you're the best in Backyard Baseball!
Backyard Baseball is a baseball sports video game that was first released back in 1997, and was later ported to the Game Boy Advance (GBA) handheld gaming console back in 2002. Take on the managerial role and create a team consisting of different players! Compete against the other teams in the neighborhood and have fun! Keep your eyes out for the occasional powerups and get the edge on the game.

Emulator Controls

←→↑↓ = Directions

Z = A X = B

A = L S = R

enter ↵ = Start

← backspace = Select

Related Games

Backyard Baseball is an online GBA game that you can play at Emulator Online. This free Game Boy Advance game is the United States of America region version for the USA. Backyard Baseball is a single title from the many sports games, arcade games and baseball games offered for this console. If you enjoyed playing this, then you can find similar games in the gba games category. Backyard Baseball game is from the various retro games on the site, and there are more games like this, including Backyard Football, R.B.I. Baseball and Backyard Basketball 2007.

Available Platform: Windows

Backyard Baseball is a baseball game created by Humongous Entertainment and released for Windows and Macintosh in 1997.

Game Review

Backyard Baseball is a baseball game created by Humongous Entertainment and released for Windows and Macintosh in 1997.

It's the first of a long series of successful titles, the last one of which was released in 2015.

The idea of a videogame about kids playing baseball was developed by Nick Mirkovich, illustrator and animator. He presented the concept to the legendary Ron Gilbert (not only the creator of Maniac Mansion but also the founder of Humongous), and after a while, he approved. The design team was made of Mirkovich, Richard Moe (a programmer), and Mark Peyser (a graphic designer).

The game created by the trio was brilliant and totally unique. High-quality hand-drawn cartoon graphics, fluid animations, excellent gameplay, and, most importantly, a fantastic character design. The baseball players, 30 kids, were designed with their own look&feel and personality. Vaguely inspired to the Peanuts, they are also a great example of diversity: 15 boys, 15 girls, all in different sizes, colors, and races.

Somehow the kids remind me of movies such as The Bad News Bears (an amazing 1976 movie with Walter Matthau), and 'The sandlot', except that in the game, there are many more girls :)

Anyway, the kids in Backyard Baseball are so cute it's impossible not to fall in love with them. For each one of them, composer Rhett Mathis created a specific theme song. This was probably one of the most memorable elements of this game.

As you could expect from a sports sim, there are also top players. In this case, the real star is a short kid called Pablo Sanchez. Even if he looks like the worst player, he is the greatest one, and everybody loved him. Believe it or not, Pablo Sanchez is one of the most beloved videogames characters ever created.

Curiously, Backyard Baseball was developed using the SCUMM game engine, the same used in many graphics adventure. It's a great example of the flexibility of the engine invented by Ron Gilbert. Apparently, creating a sports sim was totally possible. The basic mechanic is indeed quite simple. Still, the game supports different fields, tournaments, different stats for the players, and even a sort of Mario Kart-style power-ups.

Backyard Baseball is simply one of the most popular videogames ever created. So what are you waiting for? Download and play it!

Review by: Manu
Published: 3 November 2019, 5:13 pm