Inspired by an article by Zach Kram at the Ringer last year, Bobby and Alex take a deep dive into the history of “Backyard Baseball,” the kids-video-game-turned-cult-classic that they grew up with. They bring on Nick Mirkovich, one of the game’s co-creators, to talk about the game’s inception and its evolution through the years, and speculate on why the game remains so firmly embedded in the minds of this generation. They dive into the colorful personalities of each character and reminisce on what made the game so special in the first place. It’s a full-on nostalgia sesh, featuring real gameplay and cameos from Sunny Day, Vinnie the Gooch, and the one and only Pablo Sanchez.

Do you want to play the game too and get all the memories rushing back? Here’s how!

On a Mac:

1.Download the video game emulator ScummVM.

If you haven't played Backyard Baseball 2003 or want to try this sports video game, download it now for free! Published in 2002 by Infogrames, Inc., Backyard Baseball 2003 is still a popular baseball title amongst retrogamers, with a whopping 4.2/5 rating. Home»Fixes»PC»Backyard Baseball 2005. I double dare you to fill this field! Popular Videos. Total War: Three Kingdoms Mandate of Heaven Reveal Trailer. Ghost of Tsushima Official Story Trailer. DOOM Eternal Official Launch Trailer. Battlefield V Into the Jungle Overview Trailer.

2. Open the DMG file and drag ScummVM into your Applications folder.

3. Download Backyard Baseball 2001 here.

4. Once the ZIP file has downloaded, double click to open it. It will reveal an ISO file called Backyard Baseball 2001.

5. Double click to open the ISO file. It should open a drive that looks like this.

6. Create a new folder on your desktop (or wherever you will remember) and call it Backyard Baseball.

7. Select all the contents of the ISO drive and drag them into the folder you just created.

8. Now, open up ScummVM and click “Add Game” on the right hand side. Find the folder you created and click “Choose.”

9. You should see a screen like the one below. Press ok, select the game, and press start!

On a PC:

1.Download the video game emulator ScummVM.

2. Save to your desktop, or wherever is convenient for you.

3. Download Backyard Baseball 1997 here, or Backyard Baseball 2001 here.

4. Double click to open the zip file. It should open a folder called Backyard Baseball.

5. Open ScummVM and click “Add Game.” Navigate to find the Backyard Baseball folder and click “Choose.”

6. You should see a screen like the one below. Press ok, select the game, and press start!

Enjoy!

All music sound clips, and photos from “Backyard Baseball,” courtesy of Humongous Entertainment/The Evergreen Group.

~~

Follow Tipping Pitches on Twitter and like us on Facebook. Find more great content over at tippingpitches.atavist.com. Questions, comments, or concerns? Shoot us an email at tippingpitchespod@gmail.com.

Hey, batter battHEY, BATTER BATTERWE WANT A BATTER, NOT A BROKEN LADDERwe want a batter not aSWING BATTER BATTSwing, batter bWE WANT Aswing, batterSWING BATTERwe want a batter not a broken ladderWE WANT A BATTERHEY, BATTERWe wantswingHEY BATHEYBATTERBATTERBATTER!!!

There, you've gotten a good 70% of the Backyard Baseball experience. The rest is 15% pop flies, 10% foul balls, 4.9% strikeouts, and 0.1% Jen Taylor squealing 'Caught in a pickle!' - just like the real thing.

• 1Unused Graphics
• 3Unused Dialogue
• 4Unused Text

Unused Graphics

Placeholder Headshots

The game contains a full set of placeholder character headshots for the strategy menu. They're stored in a different format from the final versions, which suggests the menu was overhauled at some point and the old graphics were forgotten about.

For what it's worth, this is probably the earliest available artwork showing the characters hatless.

Room Backgrounds

Several of the game's rooms are used only for storing data and don't need a background, but all of them have one anyway. Some are just blank, but a few are more interesting.

Rooms 16 and 19 store the background chatter for the female and male characters, respectively. Their background consists of the handwritten message 'Stupid talkies' against a very eye-displeasing background.

Room 22 contains the batting animations and this quirky message.

Room 25 holds most of the baseball logic, and a similar message to room 22.

Humongous Vision

A few placeholder graphics for the Humongous Vision display are still in the game.

This seems to be how the board looked early in development. Assuming it had the same placement at that point, the green bit at the bottom is the center point of the home run fence.

A placeholder version of the infield fly rule screen.

It's not clear what this is, but it's obviously meant to fit into the same 'slot' as the early Humongous Vision graphics. Possibly it was meant to simulate fields without the display for testing. Most likely, the brown thing on the right connected to some other placeholder graphic, now lost.

Collision Maps

There are several graphics in the game data which, when assembled and overlaid onto the baseball fields, seem to mark parts of the collision data for each area. They're incomplete, though every field except Tin Can Alley has at least one.

Cement Gardens

Dirt Yards

Eckman Acres

Playground Commons

The odd streak on the second base line is actually part of the tree graphic overlay in the bottom-right corner, so it's definitely in the right place. Who knows what it's doing there.

Backyard Baseball For Mac Download 2017

Sandy Flats

For some reason, a Steele Stadium component is stored with the Sandy Flats pieces.

Steele Stadium

Parks Department Field No. 2

Big City Stadium

Super Colossal Dome

Miscellaneous

A 'TEMP' version of the tournament bracket menu icon snuck into the final game.

Can You Download Backyard Baseball For Mac

This save/load preview placeholder is present in several other Humongous games. This game displays the teams and score instead of a graphical preview, so presumably this is just left over from whichever game this was built off of.

Camera Debugger

Room 6 seems to be the remnants of a camera debugging system, probably related to the pseudo-3D gameplay in the overhead field view. The buttons on the control panel are apparently programmed to adjust the specified parameters and print relevant debug text like 'camera X angle is %d', and there are several scripts in the room that are obviously meant to do something, but it's not clear how this is supposed to be loaded or whether it still works.

Unused Dialogue

System Messages

Apparently Sunny Day was supposed to read out the text for the game's menus, which are silent in the finished game. These files appear at the very beginning of the dialogue file along with several other unused lines below, suggesting they were moved there when this feature was cut, then forgotten about.

Players at Bat

The only thing Sunny Day says when generic players are up at bat in Baseball '97 is 'steps up to bat', but she has unused variations that would eventually go used in the Major League licensed editions that add pros.

Color Commentary

A few of Vinnie's lines go unused. Like Sunny's lines above, these are at the very beginning of the dialogue file.

Wrong-Way Baserunning

There are several clips of Sunny and Vinnie reacting to players running around the bases the wrong way. Although this is occasionally alluded to in the game, it can never actually happen.

Sunny

Vinnie

'And a Miss'

Sunny has a few lines related to receiving a strike by 'missing'. It's possible there was originally some element of aiming the swing rather than just timing it, or these were just generic variations on the regular messages that were cut because they could be misinterpreted as implying this feature existed.

Download Backyard Baseball 1997 For Mac

Other

Backyard Baseball For Mac Downloads

A clip of Sunny saying 'Tags her!', but for some reason it's incorrectly sampled to play at half-speed (and also with some very bad audio feedback).

Here's what it should sound like normally.

Unused Text

Subtitles

Most Humongous games have inaccessible subtitles, and this one is no exception. Unlike most games, adding 'TextOn=1' to the game's configuration file does not turn them on, making ScummVM the most practical way to see them.

Debug Output

Also like most Humongous games, this one contains a slew of console debug output. The easiest way to view it is to run the game in ScummVM and set the debug level to 0 or higher.

Backyard Baseball For Mac Download Mac