''Backyard Sports'' (originally branded as ''Junior Sports'') is a video game series released for consoles, computers and mobile devices. The series is best known for starring kid-sized versions of popular professional sports stars, such as

Albert Pujols José Alberto Pujols Alcántara () (); born January 16, 1980) is a Dominican-American former professional baseball first baseman, designated hitter and third baseman who played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB). Nicknamed "The Machine", ...

, Paul Pierce,

Barry Bonds Barry Lamar Bonds (born July 24, 1964) is an American former professional baseball left fielder who played 22 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB). Bonds was a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates from 1986 to 1992 and the San Francisco Giants f ...

, Tim Duncan, Clint Mathis, Kevin Garnett, Tom Brady,

David Ortiz David Américo Ortiz Arias (born November 18, 1975), nicknamed "Big Papi", is a Dominican-American former designated hitter (DH) and first baseman in Major League Baseball who played in the American League (AL) from 1997 to 2016, primarily wit ...

Joe Thornton Joseph Eric Thornton (born July 2, 1979) is a Canadian professional ice hockey centre who is currently an unrestricted free agent. He has previously played for the Boston Bruins, San Jose Sharks, Toronto Maple Leafs and Florida Panthers of the ...

and Andy Macdonald. The ''Backyard Sports'' series is licensed by the major professional U.S. sports leagues: Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Football League (NFL), the National Hockey League (NHL), and

Major League Soccer Major League Soccer (MLS) is a men's professional soccer league sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation, which represents the sport's highest level in the United States. The league comprises 29 teams—26 in the U.S. and 3 in Canada ...

(MLS). The series includes ''

Backyard Baseball ''Backyard Baseball'' is a series of baseball video games for children which was 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 ...

'', ''

Backyard Basketball ''Backyard Basketball'' is a series of entries into the ''Backyard Sports'' franchise of video games. The first game was developed by Humongous Entertainment and published by Infogrames for Microsoft Windows and Mac platforms in 2001. Additional ...

'', ''

Backyard Football :''This article describes the video game. For the underlying sport, see Street football (American)''. ''Backyard Football'' is a series of video games for various systems. The series was developed by Humongous Entertainment and published by In ...

'' ( American football), ''

Backyard Soccer ''Backyard Soccer'', known in Europe as ''Backyard Football'' (PC) or ''Junior Sports Football'' (PlayStation) and in Australia as ''Junior Sports Soccer'', is an association football video game in the '' Backyard Sports series'', developed by H ...

'', '' Backyard Hockey'' ( Ice hockey), and ''Backyard Skateboarding''. In the games, players form a team consisting of Backyard Kids and pro players, which they take through a "Backyard League" season, attempting to become the champions. Players can create their athletes, starting in

(1999). Another aspect of the games is the use of Power-Ups, allowing players to gain "super-abilities". For instance, "Super Dunk" allows a basketball player to make a dunk from nearly anywhere on the court, "Leap Frog" allows a football player to jump over the entire defensive line, and "Ice Cream Truck" causes the other team to be distracted for a brief period. Some of these games are playable with the ScummVM emulator.

History

The series began in late 1997 when

Humongous Entertainment Humongous Entertainment, Inc. was an American video game developer based in Bothell, Washington. Founded in 1992, the company is best known for developing multiple edutainment franchises, most prominently ''Putt-Putt (series), Putt-Putt'', ''Fred ...

, owned by GT Interactive, created the first game in the franchise: ''

''. Later, GT Interactive was purchased by Infogrames. Infogrames allowed

to expand the series, and Humongous developed more titles such as ''

'', '' Backyard Hockey'', ''Backyard Skateboarding'', ''

'' and ''

''. Following the buyout by Infogrames, these titles from the ''Backyard'' series were released for game consoles, including the

GameCube The is a home video game console developed and released by Nintendo in Japan on September 14, 2001, in North America on November 18, 2001, and in PAL territories in 2002. It is the successor to the Nintendo 64 (1996), and predecessor of the Wii ...

, Game Boy Advance,

PlayStation 2 The PlayStation 2 (PS2) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Sony Computer Entertainment. It was first released in Japan on 4 March 2000, in North America on 26 October 2000, in Europe on 24 November 2000, and in Australia on 3 ...

, Xbox 360, and

Wii The Wii ( ) is a home video game console developed and marketed by Nintendo. It was released on November 19, 2006, in North America and in December 2006 for most other Regional lockout, regions of the world. It is Nintendo's fifth major ho ...

. Infogrames in North America eventually changed its name to Atari Interactive. In July 2013, private equity firm The Evergreen Group bought the ''Backyard Sports'' franchise during the Atari bankruptcy proceedings for its portfolio company Epic Gear LLC. It was later sold by Epic Gear to Day6 Sports Group. In December 2014, Day6 Sports Group began to relaunch of the ''Backyard Sports'' series with ''Backyard Sports NBA Basketball'' for smartphones and tablets, with Golden State Warriors point guard

Stephen Curry Wardell Stephen Curry II ( ; born March 14, 1988) is an American professional basketball player for the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Widely regarded as one of the greatest basketball players of all time, ...

as the cover athlete. In 2016, Day6 Sports Group was acquired by European investment group. In April 2019, Humongous Entertainment tweeted an image of the original ''Junior Sports'' logo, hinting at a possible re-release of the original games and/or the developer having re-secured the rights to the series proper. However a week prior, Humongous replied to a Twitter post saying they didn't own the rights to the franchise.

Games in the series

Film

In 2016,

Cross Creek Pictures Cross Creek Pictures is an American film production studio formed in 2009 by Timmy Thompson, Tyler Thompson and Brian Oliver. Its first production was the acclaimed ''Black Swan'' (2010), which was followed by ''The Ides of March'' (2011), ''The ...

and Crystal City Entertainment were developing a film based on ''Backyard Sports'' with producers Brian Oliver and Ari Daniel Pinchot.

References

External links

* (2007 archive on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine) * {{DEFAULTSORT:Backyard Sports Series Video game franchises Humongous Entertainment games Infogrames games Atari games Fantasy sports video games Video game franchises introduced in 1997 Video games developed in the United States