Backyard Baseball 2001

This page is rather stubbly and could use some expansion. Are you a bad enough dude to rescue this article? Notes: This page only documents the revisional differences. We should document the unused content of the original release.

To do: Document the unused content from the original release.

The sequel to the original (it was even announced under the name Backyard Baseball 2, if that doesn't give you a clue), now with some MLB Pro players and teams thrown in the mix.

Revisional Differences#

Like with other games in the series that have been re-released on Steam (retitled to Backyard Baseball '01), some changes were made on the legal and trivial side of things; as it runs on a hacked copy of the game due to the source code being gone.

As an aside, this is the only re-release in the series to maintain its professional sports league license from the original release, as Major League Baseball does not do exclusive video game licenses (whereas in the cases of Backyard Football '99 and Backyard Hockey '02, the National Football League and the National Hockey League both have exclusive licenses with EA for Madden NFL and NHL).

Opening Screens and Intro#

To do: Should the opening screens and intro sequence be split instead of being on the same sub-section?

• As usual, to avoid a lawsuit from Tommo, the Humongous Entertainment and Humongous Sports logos were replaced with Mega Cat Studios and Playground Productions logos, respectively. The sounds were kept intact for both screens, however.
• The MLB logo screen replaces the players association logo with the alumni association logo, removes the Genuine Merchandise logo, changes the font, and rewords the text. When the game was first re-released, this screen replaced the Humongous Sports screen with the sound intact, which was fixed in a patch to add the Playground Productions logo.
• Ken Griffey Jr. was replaced with Mo Vaughn due to not wanting to use his likeness in the re-release.
• Two of the pro team logos have been changed. Notable is the Cleveland Indians logo being changed to the Cleveland Guardians logo due to the controversy with the former name and team mascot, Chief Wahoo.

Title Screen#

Original	Backyard Baseball '01

The Humongous Entertainment and MLBPA logos were changed here as well. The former has been replaced with the Mega Cat logo like in the opening screen (again, to avoid legal issues) and the players alumni association logo replaced the players association logo.

Treehouse Main Menu#

Original	Backyard Baseball '01 (without online feature enabled)	Backyard Baseball '01 (with online feature enabled)

• The online play option was removed. It can be re-added back into the game on the .ini file using the code "OnlinePlay=TooCrashyCrashySorryWeTriedOurBest".
• The Humongous Sports and MLBPA logos were changed here as well similar to the title screen. The former is replaced with the Playground Productions logo (once again, to avoid any legal trouble with Tommo) and the players association logo with, again, the alumni association logo.

Pro Teams#

As with the intro animation, the Cleveland Indians and Oakland Athletics were changed to the Cleveland Guardians and Athletics, reflecting their respective real-life name changes (the former is due to a controversy surrounding the former name and team mascot, Chief Wahoo; the latter due to the team moving out of Oakland and temporarily playing in West Sacramento at the time of release while they await their new stadium in Las Vegas, with the A's owners refusing to have a city designation for the time being). Strangely, no other teams received logo, name, and/or color updates, most notably the Montreal Expos still appearing instead of the Washington Nationals.

Players#

Barry Bonds, Ken Griffey Jr., and Frank Thomas did not grant the use of their names and likenesses for the re-release, so they were replaced with fictional, custom characters Hugo Hernandez, Luke Lopez, and Chase Wilton respectively. All three replacements do keep the original stats, though. This also results in the Chicago White Sox and San Francisco Giants not having a player representing them in the re-release (the Cincinnati Reds still have Barry Larkin representing them).

Player Cards#

Original	Backyard Baseball '01

The option to view each pro player's real card was removed, as the manufacturer for the cards, Pacific Trading Cards, lost the MLB license and was bought out by Playoff in 2004.

Voice Differences#

To do: Rip and upload the voices from both the re-release and the original version. I think it redubbed all mentions of a few of the former team names with the current names.

To accompany the re-names of the Cleveland Guardians and the Athletics from the original release, all instances of them have been completely redubbed to match. This creates a jarring difference in voices though as they do not sound alike when comparing the original voices and the newly redubbed lines. While it is not specified who did the voices, Playground Productions CEO Lindsay Barnett might have voiced Sunny Day for the new dialogue.

"Thanks For Everything" Note#

Like all other re-releases of the Humongous-developed Backyard Sports titles, the credits added a note for the original Humongous Entertainment.

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#