• Backyard Sports Club is a co-ed adult sports club with leagues in Virginia Beach, Norfolk, Chesapeake and Hampton Virginia. This alternative sports league is built on being social and fun with a new twist to the old pastime sport of picnic outings and field day from elementary school.
• Backyard Football is basically a highly simplified football game that can be picked up easily without having an in-depth knowledge of the sport. For instance, there are only five players on the field at one time, the plays are simple, and the rules are relaxed.
• The original Backyard Football game was released on September 7, 1999 and was published by GT Software Interactive. The game was released on Microsoft Windows and Macintosh. 1 Game Modes 1.1 Single Game 2 Controls 2.1 Mouse 3 Players 3.1 Backyard 3.2 Pros 3.3 Non-Playable 4 Teams 4.1 Pro 4.2 Backyard 4.2.1 Adjectives 4.2.2 Colors Players can play a single game in a single or two player setting.

Backyard Football is a series of video games for various systems. The series was developed by Humongous Entertainment and published by Atari. It is one of several sub-series in the Backyard Sports series, and is the first to feature professional players as kids, examples being Steve Young and Barry Sanders. Thanks to Felix Gray for sponsoring this video! Shop now: Football from 1998 is an amazing game. Let's relive my childhood in.

Backyard Sports (originally branded as Junior Sports)^[1][2] is a series of video games released for consoles, computers and mobile devices. The series is best known for starring kid-sized versions of popular professional sports stars, such as Albert Pujols, Paul Pierce, Barry Bonds, Tim Duncan, Clint Mathis, Kevin Garnett, Tom Brady, David Ortiz, Joe Thornton and Andy Macdonald. The Backyard Sports series is licensed by the leading professional U.S. sports leagues: Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Football League (NFL), the National Hockey League (NHL), and Major League Soccer (MLS).

The series includes Backyard Baseball, Backyard Basketball, Backyard Football (American football), Backyard Soccer, Backyard Hockey (Ice hockey), and Backyard Skateboarding. In the games, players form a team consisting of Backyard Kids and pro players, which they take through a 'Backyard League' season, attempting to become the champions. Players can create their own athletes, starting in Backyard Football (1999). Another aspect of the games is the use of Power-Ups, allowing players to gain 'super-abilities'. For instance, 'Super Dunk' allows a basketball player to make an incredible dunk from nearly anywhere on the court, 'Leap Frog' allows a football player to jump over the entire defensive line, and 'Ice Cream Truck' causes the other team to be completely distracted for a brief period of time.

Some of these games are playable with the ScummVM emulator.^[3]

History[edit]

The series began in late 1997 with Humongous Entertainment creating the first game in the franchise: Backyard Baseball. Humongous Entertainment was then owned by GT Interactive.^[4] Later Infogrames bought GT Interactive^[5] and along with it came all of the game titles. Infogrames allowed Humongous Entertainment to expand the series, and Humongous developed more titles such as Backyard Soccer, Backyard Hockey, Backyard Skateboarding, Backyard Basketball and Backyard Football. Following the buyout by Infogrames these titles from the Backyard series were released for game consoles, including the Nintendo GameCube, Game Boy Advance, PlayStation 2, Xbox 360, and Wii. Infogrames in North America eventually changed its name to Atari Interactive.

On July 24, 2013, private equity firm The Evergreen Group, bought the Backyard Sports franchise during the Atari bankruptcy proceedings, for its portfolio company Epic Gear LLC.^[6] It was later sold by Epic Gear to Day6 Sports Group.^{[citation needed]}

On December 11, 2014, Day6 Sports Group announced the relaunch of the Backyard Sports series with Backyard Sports NBA Basketball for smartphones and tablets, with Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry as the cover athlete.

In 2016, Day6 Sports Group was 'acquired by a European investment group'^[7]

On April 19, 2019, Humongous Entertainment tweeted an image of the original Junior Sports logo, hinting at a possible re-release of the original games and/or the developer having re-secured the rights to the series proper.^[8][1][2]

Games in the series[edit]

Film[edit]

In 2016, it was reported that Cross Creek Pictures and Crystal City Entertainment were developing a film based on Backyard Sports with Brian Oliver and Ari Daniel Pinchot producing.^[9]

References[edit]

1. ^ ^abSchmidt, Eugene (April 24, 2019). 'Humongous Entertainment coming to consoles'. Barrelrolled. Retrieved May 17, 2019.
2. ^ ^abFrech, Ricky (April 24, 2019). 'Humongous Entertainment is Bringing Their Collection of 90s Classics to Consoles'. DualShockers. Retrieved May 17, 2019.
3. ^http://gamesdbase.com/list.aspx?in=1&searchtext=backyard&searchtype=1
4. ^News, Bloomberg Business (1996-07-11). 'COMPANY NEWS;GT INTERACTIVE ACQUIRES HUMONGOUS ENTERTAINMENT (Published 1996)'. The New York Times. ISSN0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-12-31.
5. ^'History of Infogrames Entertainment S.A. – FundingUniverse'. www.fundinguniverse.com. Retrieved 2020-12-31.
6. ^http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20130724006402/en/Evergreen-Group-Agreed-Acquire-Backyard-Sports-Video/
7. ^Kram, Zach (2017-10-10). 'How 'Backyard Baseball' Became a Cult Classic'. The Ringer. Retrieved 2020-12-31.
8. ^Humongous [@HumongousEnt] (April 19, 2019). '[Image-only tweet; image shows a red exclamation point on a transparent background overlaid with the words 'It's Junior Sports' in blue.]' (Tweet). Retrieved May 17, 2019 – via Twitter.
9. ^Fleming Jr, Mike (March 30, 2016). ''Backyard Sports' Video Game In Movie Deal With Cross Creek & Crystal City'. Deadline.

Backyard Football Games

External links[edit]

• Official website (2007 archive on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine)
• Backyard Sports series at MobyGames

Backyard Football is a football video game released by Humongous Entertainment in 1999. The game was the third Humongous Sports game released by Humongous Entertainment, preceded by Backyard Soccer and Backyard Baseball. It is the first of all of the Backyard Sports series to consist of the Backyard kids and professional players as kids.

Backyard Football 2002

Gameplay[edit | edit source]

They're 3 types of gameplay available in Backyard football. The first one is a single game. A player picks the field they wish to play on, the weather type, those being sunny (the players run very fast on this terrain) rainy (the players run at a normal speed and the ball is very hard to throw) and snowy (players are slow). They then pick the difficuly between Easy, medium, or hard, and decide on weather they want the auto or manuel kick on. They then pick their team name, which is all of the current NFL teams, and 10 backyard teams. They then take turns picking players with the CPU. There are a total of 7 players on a team, two will sit out for a play, while 5 get to see action. The stats of a player for a single game have no effect on a players season stats.

The second type of gameplay is season mode. The player picks their home field, settings, and team before the season. They then are allowed to pick all seven of their players before the CPU can pick any for the rest of the league. They then guide their team through a 14 game season, and if they are to win their division or be picked as the wild card, the team has a chance to compete in the playoffs. 8 teams compete to make it to the finals for a chance to win the 'Super Colossal Cerial Bowl.'

The Third type of gameplay is online play. Backyard Football is the only game along with Backyard Baseball 2001 that offers online play with players across the globe. Online play is hosted through the Junior Sports Network, online play that is only available for Windows users, since the network system does not support macintosh. Since www.jrsn.com has been discontinued, no new coach names may be registered to play online. While doing online play, the player may make contact with another coach online. They may then chat with each other with only pre-written dialogue, since the network is not being monitored to make sure no innapropriate language is used. Like Backyard Baseball 2001, there are 3 modes of difficulty. Easy, Medium, and Hard. The harder the difficulty, the more likely the players out on the field are going to not make such magnificent plays to 'bail the coach out'.

Stats[edit | edit source]

The stats of a player are divided into 5 categories, each category offering a skill rating of 1 to 4, showing the players skill at a certain category.

Catching: Shows the players catching skills. A player with high catching skills is unlikely to drop an average pass, and will easily catch a lousy pass most of the time.

Throwing: Judges this players skills of the length they can throw the football, the accuracy of the pass, and the height of the ball.

Running: Shows the speed of the player, players with great speed have a better chance of being able to score a long rushing touchdown.

Blocking: Shows the players ability to block a rushing player, or how strong the player is at rushing and knocking down another blocker. A player with good blocking skills also will have a greater chance of forcing a fumble when tackling an opposing player.

Kicking: Shows either the players power when delivering a kick, or accuracy when attempting a field goal or PAT (point after Touchdown.)

Cheats[edit | edit source]

There are 2 cheats that are accountable for Backyard Football. The first one is to hear Pablo Sanchez (a Spanish-speaking player) speak in English. Like in Backyard Baseball, Soccer and Baseball 2001, a player must hold shift and enter and click on Pablo's portrait to hear him talk in English.

The other one is to have the player's team be the Tackling Dummies. The Tackling Dummies are a team of Mr. Clanky and his practice bots used by a player when they perform a practice mode. When entering a coach name, the player must enter the name in as 'Mr. Clanky'. After this, all of the league setup options and the team pickings are skipped, and the Tackling Dummies (a very solid team) are the player's team.

Pro Kids[edit | edit source]

There are 8 pro kids in Backyard Football. Here are their names and teams.

• Randall Cunningham QB Minessota Vikings
• Brett Favre QB Green Bay Packers
• Dan Marino Miami QB Miami Dolphins
• Barry Sanders RB Detroit Lions
• Steve Young QB San Francisco 49ers
• Drew Bledsoe QB New England Patriots
• Jerry Rice WR San Francisco 49ers
• John Elway QB Denver Broncos

References[edit | edit source]