Backyard Sports Series - History (Specific Games)

History (Specific Games)

The series began in the late 1990's, with Backyard Baseball and Backyard Soccer. Neither game had players from the MLB or MLS, respectively, but were pretty successful in their time.

Following the buyout by Infogrames various games from the Backyard series have been released in 1998 for game consoles, including: Nintendo GameCube, Game Boy Advance, and the PlayStation 2.

The year 1999 saw updated versions of the most recent Backyard Football (NFL). In 2001, a new game, Backyard Basketball, was released, and it featured Kevin Garnett and Lisa Leslie.

With the release of Backyard Hockey, the new character designs for each of the Backyard Kids was introduced, with older and edgier kids along with improved graphics. The series has changed radically over time, which evokes resentment from the people who grew up with the series, as the art design has become drastically different and some of the key characters are no longer in the series.

In 2004 Atari announced it was creating a fresh new look and gameplay experience for the franchise with the release of Backyard Skateboarding and featured Andy MacDonald and Tony Hawk. They stated that it is a completely new take on a longtime favorite franchise with all-new features, updated graphics, enhanced gameplay, and extensive options that will keep players and gamers alike enthusiastically entertained. The game was released at the end of May 2010 and received favourable reviews on family oriented websites. Common Sense Media gave the game five stars and GeekDad on the Wired website called it a lot of fun.