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24-421: The series includes five sub-series based on different team sports— Backyard Baseball , Backyard Soccer ( association football ), Backyard Football ( American football ), Backyard Basketball , and Backyard Hockey ( ice hockey )—as well as the single game non-team sport-based Backyard Skateboarding . In the games, players form a team consisting of Backyard Kids and pro players, which they take through

48-460: A " Backyard League " season, attempting to become the champions of their chosen sport. Players can create their own custom characters, starting in Backyard Football (1999). An additional aspect of the games is the use of Power-Ups, allowing players to gain "Super-abilities". For instance, "Super-Dunk" allows a basketball player to make a dunk from nearly anywhere on the court, "Leap Frog" allows

72-434: A football player to jump over the entire defensive line, and "Ice Cream Truck" causes the other team to be distracted for a brief period. The series began in late 1997 when Humongous Entertainment , owned by GT Interactive , created the first game in the franchise: Backyard Baseball . Later, GT Interactive was purchased by Infogrames and was renamed as Infogrames, Inc. Infogrames allowed Humongous Entertainment to expand

96-539: A game of baseball. The first entry released under Playground Productions and developer Mega Cat Studios , a remaster of the original Backyard Baseball entitled as Backyard Baseball '97 , was released on October 10, 2024, followed by a remaster of Backyard Soccer entitled as Backyard Soccer '98 on November 27, 2024. Remasters of Backyard Football , Backyard Baseball 2001 , Backyard Basketball , and Backyard Hockey are also planned. On November 19, 2024, Playground Productions announced that they are working to bring

120-519: A new game in the series. On August 20, 2024, it was announced that Playground Productions, led by Lindsay Barnett, would be relaunching the Backyard Sports brand alongside Pinchot and Savitsky. The brand would consist of new video games, a TV series, and films. The announcement was accompanied by an animated trailer featuring several of the Backyard Kids in their original designs preparing to start

144-518: A seasonal league, followed by the "Backyard Baseball League" playoffs, which contains the American League and National League division series , the AL and NL championship series and finally the "Backyard Baseball World Series ". Series games will vary per game. This game has various playable modes, and they include: Single Game, Batting Practice, Spectator, and Season Game. A remastered version of

168-410: Is represented by United Talent Agency (UTA) of which the franchise trademarks are held under Backyard Sports LLC. The franchise regained media attention in 2024, when NFL player Jason Kelce , in an episode of his and his brother Travis 's podcast New Heights , reminisced about playing Backyard Football and Backyard Baseball , and stated his desire to purchase the rights to the brand to develop

192-512: The 2018 Indie Megabooth and won both the "Best Digital Game Play" and the "Digital Game of the Year" award at Gameacon 2017. A number of the studio's games were featured as part of the Indie Megabooth , including the aforementioned Log Jammers as well as Little Medusa , Coffee Crisis , and Fork Parker's Crunch Out . In 2020, ten of the studio's published games were included in a cartridge for

216-590: The distribution of the best characters. In Backyard Baseball 2001 , in addition to the 30 fictional kids, each team was represented by at least one MLB pro player, many of which were all-stars during the 1999 Major League Baseball All Star Game . Eventual Hall of Fame players featured include Barry Larkin , Vladimir Guerrero , Jeff Bagwell , Larry Walker , Chipper Jones , Derek Jeter , Mike Piazza , Tony Gwynn , Ken Griffey Jr. , Cal Ripken Jr. , Ivan Rodriguez , and Randy Johnson , who are all playable characters to choose from. Other professional players from

240-421: The film has been revealed since. On November 19, 2024, along with the announcement of a new Backyard Sports title, Playground Productions revealed the development of an animated project based on the franchise, which is planned to release in 2025. Backyard Baseball Backyard Baseball is a series of baseball video games for children which was originally developed by Humongous Entertainment . It

264-493: The first Backyard Baseball title was released on October 10, 2024, with a remastered version of Backyard Baseball 2001 planned to release on a later date. Pablo Sanchez, one of the fictional playable characters in the game, has been regarded as one of the strongest athletes in video game history. The game has also been noted for its diversity (gender, race, disability, etc.) of characters, both in ratio of white to non-white and male to female, as well as skill level and

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288-539: The franchise from Epic Gear. The company announced to relaunch the franchise in December with Backyard Sports NBA Basketball for smartphones and tablets, with Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry as the cover athlete. Aside from that, no other titles were released in the franchise. In 2016, Day6 Sports Group was acquired by a European investment group. The company later went out of business in 2020. In April 2019, Humongous's social media pages tweeted an image of

312-540: The game and reading the instruction manual on the way home." In February 2017, Mega Cat published Coffee Crisis for the SEGA Genesis. The game was their first to later receive a Windows port with enhanced features, such as additional modes, a procedurally generated roguelite modifier system, and improved graphics, and was later released on the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Nintendo Switch. The PC version of Coffee Crisis

336-550: The later games included Chipper Jones , Frank Thomas , Alex Rodriguez , Alfonso Soriano , Ichiro Suzuki , Sammy Sosa , Jim Thome , Albert Pujols , Nomar Garciaparra , Ken Griffey Jr. , and Barry Bonds . Several of these players would be featured in multiple releases including Nomar Garciaparra , Derek Jeter, and Alex Rodriguez . Mega Cat Studios Mega Cat Studios is an American video game development and publishing company located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania . It

360-424: The original Junior Sports logo, hinting at a possible re-release of the original games and/or the developer having re-secured the rights to the series proper, but a week prior, Humongous replied to a Twitter post saying that they didn't own the rights to the franchise. After Day6's closure in 2020, the franchise was purchased by Ari Pinchot and Stuart Avi Savitsky via Backyard Sports LLC in 2021. Backyard Sports LLC

384-421: The original statistics and looks of the players changed. As the game progresses, there are some professionals that become available or "unlockable" including Randy Johnson , Derek Jeter , and Mike Piazza . In Backyard Baseball , players take a managerial role by creating a team of different players to compete against opponents. In the different installments, one could choose to play a one-off exhibition game or

408-526: The remasters to mobile devices and are working with Mega Cat Studios on a new original Backyard Sports title. In 2002, a live-action animated hour-long special based on the Backyard Football games entitled Backyard Basics aired on CBS on November 16. In 2016, Cross Creek Pictures and Crystal City Entertainment were reportedly in development of a film based on Backyard Sports with producers Brian Oliver and Ari Daniel Pinchot. No news about

432-547: The series under license from Humongous, Inc. In March 2008, Infogrames purchased the remaining shares of Atari, Inc. that they didn't own and renamed itself to Atari SA the following year. The two Atari businesses continued to release entries in the series within this time. In July 2013, private equity firm The Evergreen Group bought the Backyard Sports franchise during the Atari bankruptcy proceedings for its portfolio company, Epic Gear LLC. In February 2014, Day6 Sports Group acquired

456-502: The series, and Humongous later developed more titles such as Backyard Soccer , Backyard Football , Backyard Basketball , Backyard Hockey , and Backyard Skateboarding . Following the buyout by Infogrames, these titles from the Backyard series were released for game consoles, including the GameCube , Game Boy Advance , PlayStation 2 , Xbox 360 , and Wii . In 2003, Infogrames, Inc.

480-545: The studio's first game, Almost Hero, for the Nintendo Entertainment System , which generally received a positive reception. A major element of their business model of publishing new video games for "retro systems" has involved including a physical manual and case for each of their releases. Founder James Deighan says that the studio has sought to "recreate that experience of being in the back of your mom’s van coming back from Hills [a department store], opening up

504-543: Was first released in October 1997 for Macintosh and Microsoft Windows . Later games were featured on Game Boy Advance , PlayStation 2 , GameCube , Wii , and iOS . It is part of the Backyard Sports series, of which this series serves as its first sub-series. The original game consisted of 30 neighborhood kids from which the player must build a team. Over the years, the idea of "Pro players as kids" became popular, and

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528-667: Was founded in 2015 by James Deighan, Nick Mann, and Zack Manko. Mega Cat develops and publishes games for modern platforms and VR ( virtual reality ) and physical copy games for video game consoles , such as the Sega Genesis and the Nintendo Entertainment System . The company also publishes physical releases for other retro developers, such as Old Towers by Retrosouls. Mega Cat was founded in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania by James Deighan, Nick Mann and Zack Manko in 2015; they, alongside Nathaniel Wilson, Andrew Marsh, and Lauri Coderbrah produced

552-647: Was published in conjunction with Zerouno Games. To avoid having to bring in investors or otherwise raise funding early on in the studio's history, Mega Cat focused on a balancing contracted work for various brands while continuing work on their own IP. The studio has done contract work for such clients as the Pittsburgh Pirates , Devolver Digital , and Columbia Records . The studio has run crowdfunding campaigns on Kickstarter for Coffee Crisis , Log Jammers and Phantom Gear . Prior to its crowdfunding campaign, Log Jammers had been an official selection of

576-506: Was renamed as Atari, Inc. In August 2005, Atari, Inc. sold Humongous Entertainment to their majority parent Infogrames Entertainment SA for shares worth US$ 10.3 million . After the sale, Infogrames shuttered Humongous Entertainment and secured the studio's assets to Humongous, Inc., a holding company formed solely for this purpose. With this point, newer Backyard Sports titles were developed by other studios for consoles and computers, with Atari, Inc. continuing to hold publishing rights to

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