During its panel at New York Comic Con, Playground Productions not only looked back on the return and relaunch of the beloved Backyard Sports video games, but it also announced it will be completing its Backyard Sports retro collection with Backyard Basketball ’01 and Backyard Hockey ’02 in mid-November, that there are high scores and events coming to Backyard Baseball ’92, and it shared a few new details for the series’ upcoming animated special.
To learn more, IGN had the chance to speak to Playground Productions CEO Linday Barnett and Chief Product Officer Chris Waters about the past and future of this fan-favorite franchise, and we began by chatting about what makes these games so special.
“We think it works because the games have always been character-first, comedy-forward, and accessible,” Waters said. “These games weren’t, ‘Hey, let’s make the most incredibly realistic simulation,’ they were, ‘let’s recreate the experience of what it felt like to go out and pick up a bat and a ball, grab whatever friends you had around whether they’re athletic or not, and go out and play baseball and see what madness ensues.’ That madness transcends time and transcends technology.”
Backyard Sports’ Retro Library Will Be Complete in Mid-November, New Features Headed to Backyard Baseball ’97
Whether you are new to the franchise or returning to it, you’ll be happy to know that the Backyard Sports retro library will be complete when Backyard Basketball ’02 and Backyard Hockey ’02 are released on Steam in mid-November. Oh, and did we mention both will be free to download and keep?
These games, alongside Baseball ’97, Baseball ’01, Football ’99, Soccer ’98, will also be part of the Backyard Sports Retro Bundle, which will be available for $26 – a 40% savings from buying all the games individually. Players will even be able to ‘Complete the Set’ and only pay for the games you don’t have yet at the cheaper price.
Furthermore, the Backyard Soccer ’98 and Backyard Basketball ’02 mobile versions will be free on iOS and Android when that Steam retro bundle goes live later next month.
Speaking of mobile, Backyard Baseball ’97 is getting a new gamification feature in collaboration with Lucra. Fans can now compete against each other in week-long and month-long events like Home Run Competitions or Most Strikeouts.
Global high scores will be tracked in real-time, and the new feature will be free for fans and even includes a chance to win tickets to the 2025 World Series, a Pablo Sanchez trading card, and more. This feature will begin on iOS to start, and players will need to opt-iin and provide some personal information.
“What we want to do is allow that community to grow and for players to be able to engage with each other,” Waters said of the new gamification features. “And again, without the source code, we can’t make these games, but by adding a tournament layer onto them, we’re sort of creating a backdoor co-op mode.”
Fun fact, Playground Productions did not get the source code for most of these games when they acquired the rights, so the team had to hack the old CD-ROMs and rebuilt the games themselves.
“We thought those games were just dead,” Barrnett told us. “And it was an incredible feat that Mega Kat Studios was able to do, which is reverse engineer and hack the CD-ROMs to make them playable. The thing that we didn’t know in all of this, however, was that we’d be able to make the games even better and we were able to remove certain bugs that existed in the original games and add leaderboards and add competitions and just make them playable on systems that didn’t even exist back then, like Nintendo Switch.”
The Future of Backyard Sports Includes an Animated Special That Just Finished Production
We then shifted our talk to the future. While the team wasn’t ready to reveal anything about future games, they did confirm that Backyard Sports officially wrapped production on their new animated special that builds upon the brand’s beloved IP and characters.
This special is being produced by Lighthouse Studios, which is known for its work on Bob’s Burgers and Rick & Morty, and it will feature an “all-star cast” that will be announced in early November. As for when you can see it, the special will be released at Dave & Buster’s in early 2026 and direct to consumer shortly after.
“What makes Backyard Sports special is the characters,” Waters said. “For us, the opportunity to take your favorite characters and bring them to life in a new way was a no-brainer as we’ve already said this is a multi-platform franchise we want to go beyond games. We all loved how beautiful the animation was in the games and how much love and care they put in, and it made you love and understand the characters and made you want to pick a certain character. So, we are really, really humbled to be able to extend that into more animation.
“This special was our way of establishing a tone, establishing a look, and really putting our flag down to say, Backyard is a multi-platform franchise. You’re going to be able to experience it in lots of different ways. I can’t wait until we can say more, but I can promise you that I’ve got a 20-year history in animation and we have pulled out all the stops to make something that captures the tone and magic and comedy of this world.”
With Backyard Sports, the team wants these games and multimedia projects to showcase just how fun sports can be and for this new generation to enjoy all of this alongside those that grew up with them.
“Streamers have picked these games up and people aren’t watching them because they’re amazing video game players,” Waters said. “They’re watching them because they’re bringing these kids to life through their own lens. It reminds you of what it was like to play baseball the first time you picked up a glove and a bat and a ball and you were just playing for fun. I think that’s been the big thing for why this really is a timeless and classic franchise.”
“It is celebrating all of the different characters in your backyard and all their strengths and maybe even some of the weaknesses,” Barnett added. “You laugh and you get through everything together. You play together and you might win, you might lose, but you always had fun doing it. And unfortunately, a lot of sports, not just sports video games, but also just sports in general aren’t really like that anymore.”
Adam Bankhurst is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on X/Twitter @AdamBankhurst, Instagram, and TikTok, and listen to his show, Talking Disney Magic.
