Sunny keeps it professional, gracefully describing the game and never stealing the spotlight from the Gooch.
Sound : You won’t find a better broadcast duo in any of the games in our tournament than play-by-play analyst Sunny Day and color commentator Vinnie the Gooch.
It’s a simple game with a simple, bright look, and it works perfectly for what it needs to be. The menu screens aren’t anything fantastic either, but they get the information across and are easy enough to understand and navigate. It’s at its best when you’re at bat or pitching, once the ball is in play the graphics definitely take a dive.
I mean, the game was made in 1997, so the fact that it doesn’t look horrible is a feat in and of itself. Graphics: For the most part, the graphics are pretty good. The fact that Backyard Baseball went out of its way to make sure this message was delivered is wonderful, and good on them.
This is an amazing lesson to teach kids who are not just learning the sport of baseball, but also learning for the first time how to be a member of a team and socialize with their peers. There are kids of a wide variety of ethnicities, with different voices, different personalities, and even some with physical handicaps, showing that everyone is equally welcome when it comes to playing baseball. There’s exactly 15 boys and 15 girls, and every great roster I’ve ever built has a good mix of both. While I’m on the topic of all the kids in the game, I have to commend Backyard Baseball for the incredibly diverse cast of players. There’s no right way to build a team in this game, and there’s no wrong way either. I’ve always thought Pablo Sanchez was best as a shortstop, but my dad always swore by him in center field. The combinations are endless and have even led to countless debates as to who’s best at what position. There’s secret boosts as well, like Amir Khan getting all of his stats boosted when he’s on a team with his older brother, Achmed siblings Angela and Tony Delvecchio getting boosts when they play against each other or Maria Luna becoming a superstar when you pick pink as the primary color for her team. There’s the legendary Pablo Sanchez, who’s good at everything, but there’s also interesting players like Kenny Kawaguchi, the pitching guru, or Mikey Thomas, the hardest-hitting slugger who also can’t run worth a damn. There’s nothing more exciting than a draft, and every game mode of Backyard Baseball begins with drafting the nine players for your team, and you have so many choices! You have 30 unique kids to choose from, each with their own set of strengths and weaknesses. Replayability : This category is where this game shines for me. I don’t remember this being an issue when I played this game regularly, so perhaps it was something that was fixed in later iterations, but it definitely hampered my experience playing the game today. Even the kids who were supposed to be the fast ones on my team seemed like they had cinder blocks for feet. The kids run agonizingly slow when the ball is in play, so I essentially only hit home runs or singles. One negative mark is how slow the action is once the ball is in play. And I can attest to that, given the many many hours I spent playing this as a child. This game knew exactly who it was aimed at and made gameplay that that target audience would find fun. In fact, before the game I played, color commentator Vinnie the Gooch made an inspiring speech about how those of us at home should ask our parents about joining a baseball league at our local park. It is really easy to pick up and play, making it very accessible, which was clearly the No. Baseball is a game of options, whether you want to go for an extra base, throw it to the cutoff man, or try to goad the runner into advancing by throwing it to your right fielder and then gunning it into second base to get the foolish CPU runner out, you have all the options at your disposal. Gameplay: I gotta say, considering this game came out 22 years ago and is limited to just the point-an-click of the mouse, the gameplay is surprisingly strong. The first game was the flagship to what ended up becoming a massively successful brand for Humongous Entertainment, and the second game brought MLB into the mix with both real players and the official teams. This was something that my dad and I grew up playing together, and a game that I still go back to on occasion for the nostalgia of it all. This feels like one of those childhood experiences we’ve all had, as I’ve yet to find a sports fan who hasn’t played at least one of the Backyard Sports games.
It may be a bit odd to include two games from the same franchise that are so close to each other, but Backyard Baseball is a franchise that is certainly deserving of two entries.