Available Platform: Windows

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

Backyard Baseball 2001, a really nice sports game sold in 2000 for Windows, is available and ready to be played again! Time to play a baseball and licensed title video game title. Download Backyard Baseball 2001 (Windows) - My Abandonware.

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

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1. Backyard Baseball

Description of Backyard Baseball Windows

Home Run Park

Imagine a game where the players play for the love of the game, not the money. A game where multi-million dollar contracts are unknown. A game where everyone gets to play. Imagine a game just like it was with the youthful innocence of a child. This, my friends, is Backyard Baseball. Backyard Baseballtakes you back to when you were a kid, when baseball was a game, and the team was hastily put together among the kids in the neighborhood.

Playing for Real

Humongous Entertainment reached back into the past and captured all those childhood memories of baseball and digitally assembled them into this game. All the details that make the memories real are here - from the kids taunting the pitcher to the child with the asthma inhaler. Do you remember picking teams, taking turns picking from the best players until only the bad players were left? Do you remember picking someone's little brother because his big brother was a good player? It's all here. Nothing was left out.

Players choose from fields such as the sandlot, the urban parking lot, and the rich kid's backyard. Pitchers throw crazy pitches such as the 'Elevator' and the 'Crazy Ball.' Background ambient noises and the taunting by the opposing team add to the rich atmosphere that you can almost smell.

Everything about this game is charming and cute.

Swing and Miss

Gameplay includes all the necessary elements. Pitchers choose the pitch as well as the placement. Hitters swing at the ball and can even see the strike zone. Fielding is accomplished by clicking where you want the ball thrown, and running is as simple as clicking in the direction you want the runner to advance. Everything is here, and everything is easy enough for kids. The pace is a little slow, but not too fast for children. Each batter has a distinct personality - from the boy who hops to the plate to the girl who says 'my game is really tennis, anyway' when she strikes out. I was extremely impressed with all the details of each character.

I have a few complaints about the game. This game doesn't install any files to the hard disk - everything is run from the CD. For some reason, each swing of the bat causes the CD to be read. This makes the animation choppy and the mouse click to hit feels sluggish and unresponsive. While the game is playable with this problem, it makes hitting the ball a little difficult. Instead of getting better the more balls I hit, I never really improved. I think this is because I never was able to time when I hit the mouse button and the player started their swing. That little delay when it read from the CD just ruins the hand/eye coordination.

I tried copying the entire 270MB of CD data to the hard disk to see if that improved performance (note: this is not an option in the install menu, I just copied it by dragging the contents of the CD into a new folder on my hard disk.) It did speed up the game somewhat, but the batting problem didn't improve significantly.

I also encountered one bug: I hit a ball that bounced infield, then over the fence for what should have been a double. The announcer even stated this was a double, but the runner advanced only to first.

Worthy of Praise

This game is terrific and has all the elements of a Gold Medal winner. But I can't do it. The delay in clicking the mouse and the batter swinging the ball just ruins it for me. I still like the game a lot and highly recommend it, but a Gold Medal is for games without such evident flaws. I guess I'm mad because this should have been corrected. Even a little play testing would have shown that this was a problem. Instead, we are left with what could have been a 'Game of the Year,' but instead fails to deliver on one very important game element.

This is still an outstanding game and I recommend it strongly.

Review By GamesDomain

External links

Captures and Snapshots

Screenshots from MobyGames.com

Comments and reviews

jjawwechampein2019-10-242 points

i like this game because it has cominsens

faggy fag fag2019-09-241 point

i acually really enjoybthis game

curry2019-07-221 point

I like it

bigrickjohson.1.2019-04-291 point

i like pickles

im dum2019-04-27-6 points

how do u download again xD

Cascadianranger2019-02-246 points

For those wondering what to do after downloading, extract the files anyhwere into your C drive (even their own folder) and then add the files through ScummVM and use that to play

derp2018-12-22-1 point

does this require a cd?

Catbug2018-12-120 point

I agree with wonderwoman, I downloaded it but its just a zip file with a bunch of other files. What do I do now?

The Unknown2018-05-03-4 points

Read the FAQ dude. BTW I found Backyard Baseball 2003 4free on www.pcgamefreetop.net

M2018-04-27-2 points

how do i open these files?

nice gamer2018-04-080 point

hello guys but this game is so amazing and addictive game hehehe

WonderMan2018-04-075 points

I downloaded the files but now what?

yeet2018-04-051 point

hello this game is so lit i love it its so cool of fun for a family

barter2018-02-23-2 points

this game is awesome

T.J.2017-10-063 points

I love this game!

tall tyler storm2017-07-117 points

best baseball video game

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