Backyard Baseball

Backyard Baseball

The current Backyard Baseball logo.
Genres Sports
Developers Humongous Entertainment
Publishers Atari
Platforms Nintendo DS, PlayStation 2, Wii, Microsoft Windows, iOS, Xbox 360, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo GameCube, Macintosh
Year of inception 1997
First release Backyard Baseball
1997
Latest release Backyard Sports: Baseball
2015

Backyard Baseball is a series of baseball video games for children which was developed by Humongous Entertainment and published by Atari. It 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. There have been eleven different versions of the game since 1997. Some of the game titles that were created include Backyard Baseball, Backyard Baseball 2001-2010, and Backyard Sports: Sandlot Sluggers.

The original game consisted of 55 neighborhood kids which the gamer could choose to play. Over the years, the idea of "Pro players as kids" became popular, and the original statistics and looks of the players changed. Some of the professional players that were available 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. 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, a player could play an exhibition game or a 14, 16 or 32 game season (different versions vary) followed by the “Backyard Baseball League” playoffs, which contains the American League and National League divisional 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, they include: Single Game, Batting Practice, Spectator, and Season Game

Backyard Baseball attempts to recreate the experience of playing baseball as children.

Power-Ups

Sometimes accompanying the four standard batting modes (Power, Line Drive, Grounder and Bunt), some beneficial power-ups appear. In the original Backyard Baseball, these batting power-ups appeared when the player got a hit when the computer used a "crazy pitch" (see below). Starting from Backyard Baseball 2001, the power ups were awarded after a hit off a "crazy pitch" and when the player turned a double play or triple play on defense. In addition to these batting power-ups, pitching power-ups, or "crazy pitches," also progressively appear, though they are much more frequent and in number, occurring whenever the player strikes an opponent out. These pitches consume much more energy and causes the strike zone to expand, so most of the pitches given are never used consecutively. In addition to the "crazy pitches," a strikeout may also award the player "More Juice," a full energy recharge for the pitcher that can be used when the player sees fit to use it.

Backyard Baseball 2001

Batting Power-Ups

Pitching Power-Ups

Backyard Baseball 2005

Batting Power-Ups

Pitching Power-Ups

Installments

Title Year Platforms
Backyard Baseball 1997 Macintosh, Microsoft Windows
Backyard Baseball 2001 2000 Macintosh, Microsoft Windows
Backyard Baseball 2001 Game Boy Advance
Backyard Baseball 2003 2002 Macintosh, Microsoft Windows
Backyard Baseball 2003 Nintendo GameCube
Backyard Baseball 2004 PlayStation 2
Backyard Baseball 2005 2004 Microsoft Windows
Backyard Baseball 2006 2005 Game Boy Advance
Backyard Sports: Baseball 2007 2006 Game Boy Advance, Nintendo GameCube, PlayStation 2, Microsoft Windows
Backyard Baseball 09 2008 Nintendo DS, Wii, PlayStation 2, Windows
Backyard Baseball 10 2009 Nintendo DS, Wii, PlayStation 2
Backyard Sports: Sandlot Sluggers 2010 Wii, Nintendo DS, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows
Backyard Sports: Baseball 2015 2015 iOS, Android

References

    External links

    This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 10/22/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.