• Backyard Baseball Player List

Feb 14, 2013 Backyard Baseball day continues! The MLB already picked their team and now the Backyard kids will pick theirs. The pros did it by cutting players? Puh-lease, that's not the way we do it in the Backyard we pick the best and then figure it out. Backyard Baseball pits the Backyard Kids against kid versions of real pro baseball players such as Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds, and Derek Jeter. Pick your team, position players, and choose a field to play on for single games or an.

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.

Backyard Baseball Player List

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

Background

Backyard Baseball, the series combining playground atmosphere along with real players and teams, continues on computer platforms with the release of Backyard Baseball 2004. The twist is that the 'real' players in the game appear as children along with the rest of the sandlot lineup. Featured pros include Sammy Sosa, Randy Johnson, Mike Piazza, Shawn Green, Barry Bonds, Ichiro Suzuki, Pedro Martinez, Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter and more. They'll compete along with 30 Backyard Kids, a combination of girls and boys, in the following three modes of play: Single Game, Season Play, and Batting Practice.

Gameplay

Single Game has players selecting two teams from a pool of 40, adjusting options such as difficulty level, game length, home field, and whether or not to include power-ups. More than ten fields are available, from a beach and parking lot to a swampland and junkyard. No matter which team is selected, players must pick and choose members in true playground fashion. Each character is rated from one to ten in the following areas: power, contact, pitching, running, and defense. Players can also create their own child prodigy by selecting hair color, skin, body type, accessories, and more before assigning a certain number of skill points.

Created players are used in Season Mode, where they earn experience points used to increase their attributes. Each Backyard Baseball season spans 18 or 32 games, with individual and team statistics tracked and saved to the hard drive. Batting Practice is designed to help players familiarize themselves with the hitting interface as they take their cracks at various pitch types. No matter which mode is selected, players use a cursor-based system for both pitching and hitting. Four available pitch types include a fastball, curve, screwball, and change-up, while hit types consist of power, line drive, grounder, and bunt. Fictional characters Sunny Day and Abner Dubbleplay provide the play-by-play and color commentary, respectively.

Features

• An all-star MLB lineup: Alfonso Soriano, Nomar Garciaparra, Alex Rodriguez, Barry Bonds, Carlos Delgado, Ichiro, Dontrelle Willis, Sammy Sosa, Albert Pujols and Eric Gagne
• Additional bonus pros to unlock: Derek Jeter, Pedro Martinez, Randy Johnson, Shawn Green, Mike Piazza, Greg Maddux and Jim Thome Vibrant 3D visuals: players, game action and environments
• An updated game engine and all-new code, creating a fresh, 'built from the ground up' Backyard Baseball
• All 30 MLB team logos
• Thirty Backyard Kids, as well as original Backyard team names and logos
• Loads of crazy power-ups
• Customizable players
• Quick, single games as well as Season Play action
• Choice of players, fields and game details
• A Home Run Derby mini-game
• Full stats and standings in Season Play

Hardware Requirements

• Operating System: Windows 98/Me/2000/XP
• Processor: Pentium III 500MHz
• Memory: 64 MB RAM (128 MB for Windows 2000/XP)
• Hard Disk Space: 600 MB Free
• CD-ROM Drive: 8X Speed
• Video: 8 MB Windows 98/2000/Me/XP-compatible SVGA video card
• Sound: Windows 98/2000/Me/XP-compatible sound card
• DirectX: DirectX version 9.0 (included) or higher