Backyard Sports was a beloved sports game series for kids from 1999 to 2015, featuring colorful graphics, simple gameplay, and the most dominant performance in video game history by Pablo Sanchez one of the athletes. Today, Playground Productions announced that Backyard Sports is coming back, and it’s going to be more than just a video game.
According to a press release, Backyard Sports will return “across multiple verticals, including video games, merchandise, film, television and more.” The first of these projects will launch “in the coming months,” but no specifics have been announced, including whether it will be a video game or which platforms it will come to.
The announcement was accompanied by a brief trailer showing multiple kids preparing for a baseball game in the signature backyard sports art style. We see a treehouse with league standings and tournament brackets, as well as the playground itself, and then as the pitcher steps onto the mound, Pablo Sanchez steps up to bat.
Playground Productions was founded in 2022 by Lindsay Barrett, a former second-grade teacher with “more than a decade of experience in the Chicago Public School system.” The company’s website states that by “leveraging the best technology, talent and character IP, Playground creates content that celebrates the spirit of play, meets children’s developmental needs and allows children to be children.”
Backyard Sports debuted on PC in October 1997 as Backyard Baseball, followed by Backyard Soccer in September 1998 and Backyard Football in October 1999. Prior to this, the latest Backyard Sports games were released on mobile devices, with Backyard Sports: Baseball 2015 and Backyard Sports: Basketball 2015 both launching simultaneously in February 2015. Backyard Sports” movie, but the project never moved forward.
