Backyard Baseball Part 1 – Remembering the Titan.

It’s incredibly difficult for a Sports Video Game to translate well. Real life sports have a ton of moving parts that AI, no matter how advanced and likely it is to become sentient and kill us all, cannot mirror. Take basketball as an example. While there’s been plenty of decent basketball games, none have captured the game fully. Have you ever tried to run plays in NB2K? Cutting have never been good in simulations and most possessions lead to a horrific contested 32 footer. It’s like playing at the Y, but everyone in the game makes millions. Plus, there’s no button to bitch at the ref for a foul. I mean, if LeBron is on the cover, we deserve realism, damn it.

Most good sports games, are arcade style instead of a simulation. This is how NBA Jam blew up in the 90s and still has relevance today. If you’ve ever played Madden, you know that’s not a simulation. Why else is every game 70-63? Because it’s an arcade game disguised as a simulation. I mean, the best play in the game is fake punt pass anyway.

As an aside, the best example of fake simulation football was without question the NFL gameday series. In certain versions, you can carry players on your back for 50 yard TDs. In the year I brought a copy, for reasons that can only be described as I’m stupid, players could not be tackled if they successfully juked once. I’m serious. If you avoided a tackle on one juke, you would juke the next 8 defenders and score. In addition, stats did not tally correctly. It was a horrible mess. Great game though.

This is part of the reason why for the past generation, the defining sports game was Tecmo Super Bowl. It was hilariously broken. Success of the defense is determined on picking the correct play the offense selects. This results in either a giant loss for the offense, or a big play. Nearly every pass play is either a TD, or a turnover. Runs either gash defenses for 30 yard chunks, or lose 14 yards.

And yes, I know great players can influence more things, but there’s a reason I’m writing a blog and not playing Smash Brothers on ESPN 3 at 1:30 AM.

Tecmo Super Bowl’s ratings also make no sense. The most infamous video game athlete of all time is Bo Jackson. Jackson was virtually impossible to tackle, and faster than all other players. There’s countless Youtube videos of Jackson be able to kill an entire quarter of time running in circles breaking tackles. It’s part of why Bo Jackson is still revered today. Hell, they referenced his legendary video game performance in a Super Bowl commercial 2 years ago.

There were other broker players too, like Reggie White and Jerry Rice, but nobody remembers their Tecmp Super Bowl characters. They only remember Bo, as they should. What a legend.

Was Tecmo Super Bowl an outstanding game? At the time, yes. It actually kept stats and I think it tried to be a simulation, but failed horrifically. instead, it created the sports game for a generation. It’s still a ton of fun to play today. Tecmo > Madden any day. It’s not close.

While I played my share of the game, I was a bit too young to get swept in the hysteria of Tecmo Super Bowl. There’s a different game that I’ll argue was my generation’s Tecmo Bowl, even including it’s own Bo Jackson. But we can’t get there quite it. It’s a Bloggin Hood Post after all.

Baseball games should be the easiest to translate into a quality video game. Baseball is a 1-1 sport that disguises itself as a team game. The batter VS pitcher interface should be fairly easy to design, and fielding is pretty self explanatory. There’s no random movements to worry about designing like in basketball. Nor are their multiple interactions occurring simultaneously. This should be easy.

Then why the Hell did it take so long to make a decent baseball game?

Up until the recent MLB the Show games, baseball has sucked for the majority of decades. I mean, the game you’re probably thinking the premier game of the genre is Ken Griffey Jr 64. And it was fine. But was it really good? No, not at all. it’s only because we were desperate for a good game. The Triple Play Series way back on the original Playstation was too arcadey. Any game prior to the N64/Playstation era wasn’t good enough, focusing on pitches breaking several yards and random hitting results. It was bad.

The lone exception for the 2000s was MVP Basbeall 2005. That game was incredible, blending arcade with simulation perfectly. Unfortunately, EA Sports lost the baseball license after that entry and the series never got to develop further. MLB the Show clearly stole all the good parts of the series and used today’s technology to make an improved game. I love the Show, but I know what they did.

I tip my cap to them. That’s good thievery.

But despite my love of MVP Baseball and the Show, the best baseball game, and arguably the best sports game of all time is, say it with me now, Backyard Baseball. If you never played it, I’m sorry your childhood was so horrible. Either that, or you thought you were too cool for computer games. Well, sucks to suck, doesn’t it? if you’ve played the series, get ready to nod your head in agreement for a few paragraphs. If you didn’t, I recommend shutting off your phone. You might have the urge to yell at your parents for not buying you this game and ruining your formative years .

The concept was so simple, yet refreshing – Little League baseball. We make all these games about profession sports, but never think about the majority of who play video games – kids. Doesn’t it just make sense to have a game where we play as the kids? I would think so. Even better, you get to pick your squad from a pool of 30 players. We’ll circle back to this is a little bit, but having a draft to pick your team? Come on man, this is perfect. There’s nothing better than sports drafts. It leads to ranking, forcing you to pick favorites, and hurts feelings. Everyone wins in this scenario. Well, except for those with hurt feelings. But that’s collateral damage.

The presentation is unique as well. Like nearly every sports game, there is commentary. This is provided by kids as well, keeping the theme that this is little league. Can this get a little thin? Sure. Vinny the Gooch (not making that name up) can get annoying after the while, but you can mute them. So again, like every other sports game.

You don’t want to mute the game entirely though. Each of the 30 players has their own entrance music and dialogue. I mean, entrance music? Did we enter the WWE by mistake? I love this idea. I also really liked hearing the kids talk. This was in the field too, where kids would have some lines to taunt and distract the batter. It wasn’t malicious, but innocent. Honestly, it was just like when you played Little League. There’s something comforting about it.

Don’t get me wrong though – this was a fun game beyond being family friendly. The game play was simplistic, since you were really just playing it with a mouse, but that’s ok. When you’re hitting, you move your cursor to the spot the ball is going (there is a shadow of what I always assumed was the catcher’s mitt) and click with proper timing. Pitches wouldn’t always go exactly where you expected and you’re timing could be thrown up with curves, change ups and special pitches earned by strike outs.

Pitching is pretty much the reverse of hitting, but there is a stamina meter. How much control you have over your pitch location depends on your stamina, your ability to pitch and the type of pitch. The location was displayed by a circle (again, guessing the catcher’s mitt), and its size depending on the above. The circle could be pinpoint small and expand to larger than the strike zone as fatigue. It was simple, but surprisingly complex at the time. I legit don’t think games worried about rating individual pitches until a few years later. Then, every game did it. Humongous Entertainment: the great innovators of our day. No wonder they’re doing so well.

It appears Humongous Entertainment has been defunct since 2006. Great. You’re telling me the people who made Plants Vs Zombies are still making bank while the company that gave us Pablo Sanchez, Putt Putt and Pajama Sam is kaput? Bullshit. Are the Farmville people still going?

I did google, and yes, yes they are. Life isn’t fair.

The game wasn’t perfect. Fielding, in particular, sucks. Because it’s a point and click game, you have to field by moving your players by clicking to a spot on the field. That’s all well and good, but reaction time is slow. In addition, remember we’re playing Little League Baseball. Despite the numerous arcade additions to the game, the fielding is a simulation.

Now, most readers haven’t played in a Little League game in 25 years, if at all. I’ve seen the athletic level of the audience, and it’s poor. So if you don’t remember Little League, I’ll explain. Basically, there’s 2 kids who can play, and every other base runner is the result of an error. The Backyard Baseball kids commit a ton of errors. Hell, the computer fails to field basic pop ups, letting them drop for infield doubles. That’s not an exaggeration.

Is this a deal breaker? Honestly, it’s not great. But there’s so much charm to the game, you can overlook it. You can also turn off errors if it drives you crazy. Trust me it will.

Now, you may be wondering why I’m writing all this about a game that’s over 20 years old. Well, maybe you want to boot up and play a round this weekend. Or maybe you’ve exhausted all of Netflix, Disney Plus, Amazon, and even the Criss Angel Mindfreak channel on Pluto TV. We all need some entertainment right now, and Backyard Baseball is the way to go.

If you don’t have an old copy of the disk, you’re out of luck. There’s no way to google “Backyard Baseball Download” and click on the second link, and then click the link on the last post in the Reddit threat for instructions on how to download this game, as well as Backyard Soccer. It’s not possible. And this hypothetical discovery did not help me prepare this article one bit.

For those of us with copies of the games acquired legally, and I won’t insult you by putting the asterisk there, you’re probably itching to know who to pick. Whether it’s the season mode, or a pick up game versus the computer, fielding a team is the key to victory. You don’t want to come in lacking knowledge and end up with a team of 9 wiener kids.

So, what we’re going to do, in Part 2 (posting later today) is rank the 30 playable characters in the game. I’d post it here, but things got a bit long. Get ready to get angry at some of this picks. Even I’m angry and I made the list. There’s a shocking #1 ranking you have to read to believe.

Yeah, not really, but read it anyway.