I was around five years old when I would play Backyard Baseball on the shared family PC back in the late ’90s/early 2000s. I was too young to play Backyard Baseball ’97 when it first launched, but I went on to play it, along with several sequels, in the following years. Those were the first sports games I ever played, and I’ve enjoyed so many more since then. As a kid who loved sports and video games, they showed me there was an incredibly fun way to combine my two biggest interests at the time by introducing me to a world I never knew existed. This year, Backyard Baseball is returning, rebuilt from the ground up to feed the nostalgia of older fans and the curiosity of younger generations.
I’m happy to say I got the chance to play the new Backyard Baseball last month at PAX East. And even more importantly, I spoke with two enthusiastic people who played instrumental roles in making this game a reality: Playground Productions CEO Lindsay Barnett and Mega Cat Studios CEO James Deighan.
The most recent console and PC release in the Backyard Baseball franchise was Backyard Sports: Sandlot Sluggers back in 2010. Now here we are 16 years later, as a new entry is about to drop. This feels like a miracle revival, especially when so many other childhood favorites have become lost to time.
The Revival of Backyard Baseball
I got up from the Backyard Baseball demo station at PAX East and, of course, my very first question for Barnett and Deighan was, “How did you bring this back?”
“This was my favorite game when I was a little girl,” Barnett said. “I played Backyard Baseball 1997 when I was five, and when I was a teacher during the pandemic, I was trying to find great games for my students. And all I could think about was backyard sports – a good sports game that was accessible [to] everybody.”
During our chat, Barnett mentioned that the sports games on the market today are difficult. As someone who has played an embarrassing amount of NBA 2K, Madden, and some FIFA, I have to agree. The barrier to entry for new players is high in those big-name sports titles, and players often need to spend real money to avoid being left behind in certain online modes – especially in NBA 2K.
“I kept thinking about Backyard, and when it was nowhere to be found, I wound up hiring a private investigator tracking the rights down, and then got the brand!” Barnett exclaimed. “But there was really nothing that I could do with it at that point. So I had to find Mega Cat Studios and James, who were able to do what I thought was impossible – which is, reverse engineer and CD-ROM hack to bring these games back and preserve them forever.”
This is, clearly, a story about the revival of a beloved franchise. But it’s also a story about video game preservation. After meeting with Barnett, Mega Cat Studios brought back Backyard Baseball ‘97 and ‘01, along with several other Backyard sports. Thanks to their joint efforts, those older games have been available on Steam since 2024, leading into a new entry’s launch this summer. Deighan’s half of this revival story digs deeper into the preservation side of the situation.
“We maintain a company wishlist of the franchises and the games that inspired us to join the games industry,” explained Deighan, referring to Mad Cat Studios. “I had a close friend who messaged me and said, ‘Hey, you mentioned Backyard Baseball [and] Backyard Football. I think I might have found someone who’s actually working on something in that franchise.’”
“We do a massive amount of work with video game preservation and the National Video Game History Museum, working with a lot of asset recovery and storage,” Deighan said. “And we’re probably one of the only two or three companies in the world to do a lot of reverse engineering or preservation game work. So it was kind of like the perfect intersection for what Lindsay wanted to accomplish and what we want to do.”
Mega Cat Studios has published several old-school homebrew games for systems like the NES, SEGA Mega Drive, Game Boy Color, and more. They also ship physical versions of those games that are compatible with the systems they were designed for. Beyond that retro work, the company recently developed God of War: Sons of Sparta in collaboration with Santa Monica Studio, which launched earlier this year.
“So as we’ve continued to create a lot of momentum… it’s become easier and easier for people who have something that they hear is on our wishlist to call and say, ‘I heard you guys have XYZ on the wish list.’” Deighan explained. “It was a dream come true, because this has been on many interviews eight years ago, prior to even touching anything with Backyard: my favorite all-time sports games have always been the Backyard Sports and NBA Jam. I used to play 20-30 minutes before bed in college. I just love them.”
The Challenges of a Retro Revival
Bringing a nearly 30-year-old IP back from the dead is no simple task. Obtaining the rights was a major feat for Barnett, but it was another challenge altogether to develop a new entry without the source code. Backyard Baseball needed to be built again from the ground up.
“I think the biggest challenge for me was needing to find James, and I can’t tell you the lengths that I went to try to find the original source code,” Barnett said. “I was calling programmers from the original game, asking if they had old computers in their garages with anything on [them]. Really, really going to big depths to try to find it. Unfortunately, I think a lot of the original source code is destroyed, and so I thought it was gone forever.”
Even beyond the technical difficulties that come with creating a new version of an existing game, the goal here is to create an experience that provides a feeling of modernized nostalgia for longtime fans while also appealing to newcomers who might not have even seen Backyard Baseball before.
“Evolving such a fan-beloved, nostalgic game that has some kind of rose colored glasses mixed with just some really great classic gameplay decisions [is] always tricky,” Deighan said. “Because some features need to evolve, and some things just didn’t even exist in that capacity back then, such as accessibility settings [that] go beyond just access. It’s actually just quality of life, allowing players to play the way they want to experience the game. So I think that’s a constant strain for any game with that type of background, but the Playground team has been amazing to work with.”
If the PAX crowd was anything to go by, it seems that Playground Productions and Mad Cat Studios are on the right track with Backyard Baseball. Their merch was sold out every time I walked by the booth, and there were always attendees of all ages lined up to try the home run derby demo.
Modernizing Our Memories
At one point, I brought up the concept of modernizing nostalgia. The idea of keeping the game similar enough to where it’s still recognizable, but adding subtle upgrades that make it feel better than you remember. For example, Backyard Baseball allows you to play at nighttime, and fireworks go off whenever you hit a home run. It’s a nice touch that feels so natural that I completely forgot you could only play during the daytime in the original game.
“I think people talk about nostalgia a lot right now… but what I think about the Backyard Sports franchise is people aren’t just nostalgic for the game,” Barnett said. “They’re nostalgic for the time of their life where being a kid was the best job in the whole world.”
“Part of what makes us really excited about bringing Backyard back right now is that being a kid has changed. Sports are so professionalized now. Kids are trying to grow up faster,” Barnett explained. “And what I love about Backyard is it’s truly for kids, and kids at heart. That’s what I think people are nostalgic for. And we’re able to deliver that for the first time for people too, which is really meaningful.”
I never really thought of old game nostalgia that way, but it’s true. Backyard Baseball ‘97 isn’t necessarily the only thing I miss or think about when playing the new game. I miss that very specific time in my childhood, and Backyard Baseball brought me back the moment I hit a home run with Pablo Sanchez in the demo. Even just seeing characters like Pablo and Kiesha did something to my brain that I didn’t expect.
“Backyard was iconic for so many reasons back when it came out, because it was one of the few games that was school and parent-endorsed, while actually being fun,” Deighan said. “The game had accessibility and inclusivity before it was a trend. And when you can see yourself as a kid in a game… it does stick with you longer.”
“We have something called NEWstalgia for Backyard,” Deighan explained. “Which is making sure we’re always tying into these fundamental things that feel nostalgic… It’s warm, it’s comforting, it [feels like] something you’ve already [seen] there before, but it’s brand new, you know?”
This “newstalgia” is seen in the ambiance and environment. There are fireflies around the field at night, and several objects have unique animations if the ball hits them off a swing from your bat.
The Future of Backyard Sports
I was also a huge fan of Backyard Basketball growing up, and I’m still a big basketball fan in general. So I had to ask about the possibility of new entries for any other Backyard sports.
“That’s one of the most exciting parts of being the Backyard Sports franchise, not just a single sport,” Barnett said. “We want to deliver all of it, you know – it’s not a one-off title. We want to be here to stay forever. I view this brand as my legacy on Earth. So I want to do this for the rest of my life, trying to bring people Backyard titles.”
Barnett goes on to mention that there’s no year in the Backyard Baseball title, meaning that it’ll be receiving updates in the form of expansion packs, unlockables, and other DLCs to keep the game alive. I genuinely hope to see Backyard Baseball succeed after it launches on July 9. I wish the same success for the other Backyard Sports series as well, whenever they get their turns in the retro revival spotlight.
