| Backyard Baseball | |
|---|---|
 The current Backyard Baseball logo | |
| Genre(s) | Sports |
| Developer(s) | Humongous Entertainment |
| Publisher(s) | Humongous Entertainment Infogrames Atari The Evergreen Group |
| Platform(s) | Nintendo DS, PlayStation 2, Wii, Windows, iOS, Xbox 360, Game Boy Advance, GameCube, Macintosh |
| First release | Backyard Baseball October 10, 1997 |
| Latest release | Backyard Sports: Baseball 2015 |
Backyard Baseball is a series of baseball video games for children which was originally 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. It is part of the Backyard Sports series. 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 30 neighborhood kids from which the player must build a team.[1] Over the years, the idea of "Pro players as kids" became popular, and 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 a seasonal league, followed by the "Backyard Baseball League" playoffs, which contains the American League and National League division series[a], the AL and NL championship series[b] and finally the "Backyard Baseball World Series".[c] Series games will vary per game.
This game has various playable modes and they include: Single Game, Batting Practice, Spectator, and Season Game.
In 2013, The Evergreen Group acquired the intellectual property from Atari.
