Backyard Baseball (Windows, Mac OS Classic, 1997)

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: See if the Steam re-release has any differences (for example; the Mega Cat logo replacing the Humongous Entertainment logo.)

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 BAT''HEYBATTERBATTERBATTER!!!

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. It was remastered (sort of, as the original source code is lost) and re-released 27 years later on Steam as Backyard Baseball '97.

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.

Character	Early	Final		Character	Early	Final
Kimmy Eckman			Ronny Dobbs
Maria Luna			Achmed Khan
Angela Delvecchio			Amir Khan
Vicki Kawaguchi			Kenny Kawaguchi
Gretchen Hasselhoff			Pete Wheeler
Sally Dobbs			Dmitri Petrovich
Billy Jean Blackwood			Ricky Johnson
Ashley Webber			Marky Dubois
Sidney Webber			Reese Worthington
Kiesha Phillips			Pablo Sanchez
Stephanie Morgan			Tony Delvecchio
Luanne Lui			Jorge Garcia
Annie Frazier			Dante Robinson
Jocinda Smith			Ernie Steele
Lisa Crocket			Mikey Thomas

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.

Early	Final

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.

Early	Final

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's 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

Regular	Overlaid

Dirt Yards

Regular	Overlaid

Eckman Acres

Regular	Overlaid

Playground Commons

Regular	Overlaid

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.

Sandy Flats

Regular	Overlaid

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

Steele Stadium

Regular	Overlaid

Parks Department Field No. 2

Regular	Overlaid

Big City Stadium

Regular	Overlaid

Super Colossal Dome

Regular	Overlaid

Miscellaneous#

Early	Final

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

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#

This needs some investigation. Discuss ideas and findings on the talk page. Specifically: See if there's some way to make this do whatever it's supposed to.

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#

To do: There's likely lots more.

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.

Other#

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#

To do: Document.

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.

Revisional Differences#

When the game was re-released on modern computers as Backyard Baseball '97 in 2024, many changes have to be made as the game runs on a hacked version due to the source code being considered lost. While the experience hasn't been changed and kept intact, these small changes are rather noticeable.

Opening Screens#

To do: Add the Mega Cat logo. It replaces the Humongous logo.

Original	Backyard Baseball '97

The Humongous Entertainment logo is replaced with current developers Mega Cat Studios. This is because of legal issues involving Tommo, Inc. and Billion Soft having the rights to the company, meaning that it is impossible to re-release the games in their original, unabridged versions. The Humongous logo can be still seen on the treehouse menu, however. Similarly, the "It's Junior Sports" screen was replaced with the logo of Playground Productions, the current publishers and series handlers. The sounds of both screens remain intact, however.

"Thanks For Everything" Note#

The credits added a rather touching 'special thanks' note for the original Humongous Entertainment, discussing the aforementioned removal of the Humongous opening screen. This will carry on to the rest of the re-releases.

To the good people from
Humongous Entertainment

Thanks for everything.

Sorry we removed
every mention of your
company from the game.

Legal made us do it.

References#