Geographic Flexibility: The Neighborhood changes in every game.Four-Fingered Hands: Most characters have these.Dummied Out: Area 51½/ A Nameless Field from the Soccer series.Cross-Dressing Voices: Most boys are voiced by women.

Cousin Oliver: Joey, Samantha, and Arthur.Likewise, when the camera zooms in on the game (i.e., when someone's at bat or doing penalty kicks), the players look like cartoons again. Conspicuous CG: When the player sprites were changed to pre-rendered images, the spectators in the background were still 2D drawings.

Commuting on a Bus: Amir, Gretchen, and Stephanie in Backyard Baseball 2007.

Chuck Cunningham Syndrome: 13 characters.

Justified if you think about it, since the pros specialize in their respective sports while the neighborhood kids play many different sports.

Celebrity Power: The pros, who are always better than the neighborhood kids.

Cash Cow Franchise: This franchise was the cause of Humongous Entertainment making a profit.

NFL Backyard Basics handles this by having the present-day pros turn into kids while they're in the Clubhouse.

Anachronism Stew: The pros being kids in modern times, and all being around the same age.

The series was originally only Competitive Multiplayer, but starting with Backyard Football '10, Co-Op Multiplayer is also in the games.Ī demo version of Baseball 2001 can be downloaded from Infogrames, and a trial version of Sandlot Sluggers can be downloaded from Atari. The series has spawned a TV special ( NFL Backyard Basics: Football Tips from the Pros) and a few books, as well as a Comic Book Adaptation (a Prequel to the game Sandlot Sluggers) which can be read here.

There are six main brands associated with the series: Backyard Baseball, Backyard Soccer, Backyard Football, Backyard Basketball, Backyard Hockey, and Backyard Skateboarding (which has only produced one game and its Game of the Year Edition). There have been over 30 games published in the series, the first few of which are regarded as quite good and the last few of which are regarded as awful. It is the only game series that has licensing from all the major professional sports leagues in the USA: the MLB, MLS, NFL, NBA, and NHL. Backyard Sports, formerly called Junior Sports, is a sports video game series originally made by Humongous Entertainment, which was later bought by Atari.

Backyard baseball 2003 demo