It was only a matter of time: The original Backyard Baseball, first entry in the explosively popular Backyard Sports series, is coming to Steam. The re-release, titled Backyard Baseball '97, will launch on Steam October 10, making the game available for digital purchase for the first time.
Backyard Sports is one of those sleeping giant late millennial cultural institutions—not quite as enduringly popular as Pokemon or Spongebob, but a big deal in its own time and fondly remembered to this day. It provided arcadey, approachable videogame takes on various team sports—Backyard Baseball is to MLB: The Show as Mario Kart is to Gran Turismo.
The games also benefitted from having a memorable ensemble cast across the series, with the kids specializing in different sports, as well as having strengths and weaknesses consistent with their characterization across the games. A recent video by Secret Base dug into the series-wide dominance of Pablo Sanchez: Far from being a Mario-style jack of all trades, the pint-sized powerhouse was uniformly a master of all, no matter the sport.
Backyard Sports is also interesting as a specifically PC-centric series. The early games by Humongous Entertainment on PC form the real canonical core of Backyard Sports, with a legion of lesser sequels under different owners and publishers trailing off into the 2010s. Backyard Baseball on PC in 1997 was a genuine kid phenomenon, Backyard Sports: Rookie Rush for the Xbox 360 was the domain of out-of-touch uncles trying their best at Christmas time.
It's heartening to see an old game brought back into circulation, but there are some quirks to Backyard Baseball '97 that have me slightly concerned. The team at Mega Cat Studios notes that they do not have access to the original game's source code, which precludes a number of potential enhancements like game pad, Steam Deck, or macOS support. Still, I think there's value to a port that's convenient and widely available, even if it is barebones, but that also means it has to be priced accordingly. You can wishlist Backyard Baseball '97 ahead of its October 10 release on Steam.
