Backyard Baseball

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Backyard Baseball
Developer(s)	Humongous Entertainment
Publisher(s)	Atari
Platform(s)	Game Boy Advance,Wii, PlayStation 2, GameCube, Windows
Release date	1997
Genre(s)	Sports
Mode(s)	Single player
Rating(s)	ESRB: Everyone (E)

Backyard Baseball is a highly acclaimed series of kid's video games for the Game Boy Advance, PlayStation 2, GameCube, Wii and the PC. Currently all the games in the series have been developed by Humongous Entertainment and published by Atari. It is one of six Backyard Sports games.

The original game consisted of 30 neighborhood kids. Over the years, the idea of "Pro players as kids" became popular, and the original stats and looks of the players changed. Some pros include Alex Rodriguez, Alfonso Soriano, Eric Gange, Ichiro, Sammy Sosa, Jim Thome, Albert Pujols and Nomar Garciaparra. Some unlockable pros include Randy Johnson, Derek Jeter, Greg Maddux and Mike Piazza.

Managers cannot create players, but instead choose from a roster of characters to form teams. In the latest version of the game, a player could play an exhibition game or a 16 or 32 game season (previously 14) followed by the "BBL playoffs," which contains both the AL and NL divisional series, the AL and NL championship series and finally the "Backyard Baseball World Series". The game includes many modes, and they are Single Game, Batting Practice, Spectator, and Season Game.

Backyard Baseball attempts to recreate the experience of playing baseball as children.

[edit] Power-Ups

Sometimes accompanying the four standard batting modes (Power, Line Drive, Grounder and Bunt), some beneficial power-ups appear.

• Aluminum Power: is the rarest and most valued of power-ups and can disappear after one or no tries when in use. Players use an aluminum bat to hit a guaranteed home-run.
• Screaming Line Drive: can last at least two uses and appears more frequently. Players hit a fast line drive to the wall and allows the batter to run more or all bases.
• Under Grounder: can last at least two uses. Players hit a ground ball that goes into the ground, causing the ball to appear in any random area of the field.
• Crazy Bunt: can disappear after one or no tries when in use, although sometimes it will last for up to four uses when used sparingly. The ball hit will roll around the field erratically as fielders just barely miss catching it. It is effective in securing runs, doubles or triples and in exhausting the opposing team.

In addition to these batting power-ups, pitching power-ups also progressively appear, though they are much more frequent and in number. Pitching power-ups include the Big Freeze, Elevator, Crazyball, Corkscrew, Slomo, Spitball and Fireball pitches. These pitches consume much more energy and causes the strike zone to expand, so most of the pitches given are never used consecutively.

[edit] External links

• Backyard Baseball at MobyGames
• Backyard Baseball 2001 at MobyGames
• Backyard Baseball 2003 at MobyGames