The nostalgic ’90’s PC game Backyard Baseball is coming to Steam on October 10, 27 years after its initial release. It’ll cost $10.
The arcade-style baseball game is a cult favorite among sports fans who grew up with the game, many of whom are now in their 20s and 30s (and some, like Bobby Witt Jr. and Trea Turner, are also now MLB All-Stars). They’re kids’ games, but they have a certain charm; what is an empty pizza box but a home plate waiting to happen? Sometimes, the whimsy comes in the form of an oddly shaped outfield that’s built around a swimming pool. Other times, the cast of memorable neighborhood children defy the laws of physics by throwing pitches that spontaneously burst into flames.
Even Jason Kelce, former NFL player and brother of Taylor Swift’s boyfriend, Travis Kelce, said on his podcast that he considered buying the rights to the Backyard Sports franchise to reboot it. But, despite internet sleuths’ hopes, a different buyer called Playground Sports beat the Kelce brothers to the punch.
The original company behind Backyard Baseball, Humongous Entertainment, succumbed to a fate of endless mergers and acquisitions; the IP was tossed among holding companies like a $10 million afterthought. Now, the rights to iconic characters like Pablo Sanchez are in the hands of Playground Productions, a children’s media company founded by former public school teacher Lindsay Barnett.
“This was my favorite game growing up. While we’re already hard at work on the future of Backyard Sports, we first want to honor the past by restoring the games that started it all for me and so many others — beginning with Backyard Baseball 1997,” Barnett said in a press release.
Rebooting Backyard Baseball isn’t so easy as buying the IP. The original source code of the game was lost, so Playground enlisted Mega Cat Studios to remaster the game. Mega Cat hacked a copy of the game on CD-ROM and reworked it to be compatible with present-day PCs. With a successful remaster under its belt, Mega Cat and Playground intend to work together to relaunch other fan favorites from the franchise.
