Backyard Football (Windows, Mac OS Classic)

This game/console's online features are no longer supported. While this game/console's online features were once accessible, they are (as of July 27, 2002) no longer officially supported and online-exclusive features may be documented as now-unseen content.

Backyard Football is the third game of the Backyard Sports series, and the first to feature pro players as kids. Oh, and for British players, don't confuse this over the other Backyard Football, as it's just a localization of the previous game in the franchise.

To do: ­ There are actually updated versions of the game that were obtained from playing online. As the updated game patch files were not archived to Wayback Machine, please preserve them by looking back into your old computer's hard drive files. Two voice clips by Sunny and Chuck respectively in the game data have an incorrect sample rate.

Unused Text#

As with Backyard Baseball and Backyard Soccer, there are unused subtitles for all spoken dialogue in the game. Like Baseball and Soccer, these can only be viewed with ScummVM.

Unused King-Sized Dome Variant#

Unused	Used

The final field of the game, the King-Sized Dome (played on during the Gridiron Grits Cereal Bowl), normally cannot be selected from the menu, and the game always sets this field to sunny regardless if the weather was set to "random" for the season. However, there exists copies of this field in the game data for rain and snow... and even more strangely, instead of being an exact duplicate, it's actually slightly different, with all of the fictional branding, the spectators, and grass paintings completely absent. It's possible these were stuck in early as a failsafe in case the field was mistakenly set to rain or snow for any reason, and were never updated when it was finalized due to a lack of need.

Placeholder Team Name#

Warping to room 8 with ScummVM's debugger (Ctrl+D) without selecting a team will take you to the team bench screen with a blank photo and the placeholder team name "Erroneous Blunders". Since the game has no team data to load if doing such, choosing "Play Football" will trigger Sunny and Chuck's cutscene before crashing the game.

Revisional Differences#

To do: The re-release is here. Rip out and discuss voice differences, graphic differences as well as the discussion of Chase Downfield, Chuck's little brother.

Like Baseball '97, Baseball '01 and Soccer '98, the game got a re-release on Steam as Backyard Football '99. Due to the source codes being lost, Mega Cat Studios hacked the game to make it more accessible for a modern audience. While the core gameplay and content hasn't changed much, these changes are rather notable, both in the legal side and on the trivial side, as well as the introduction of a new character; Chase Downfield, who is Chuck Downfield's little brother.

Opening Screens#

• As per the norm of the re-releases of the Humongous-era titles, the original screens have been replaced with Mega Cat Studios and Playground Productions' logos to avoid any legal trouble with Tommo, Inc. and Billion Soft, who own the trademarks of the Humongous Entertainment brand.
• The NFL/NFLPA logo screen was removed.

Opening Cinematic#

• Due to not having an NFL license, the NFL team logos were replaced with the new fictional team logos and the pro players' uniforms changed colors. Strangely, despite the NFL licensing being removed, the "Officially Licensed Product" text is left intact.
• Chase Downfield replaces Brett Favre.
• The title screen replaces the original 1999 copyright with Playground Productions' 2025 copyright.

Treehouse Main Menu#

Original	Backyard Football '99
Default	Online restored

• Just like with the re-release of Baseball '01, the online play option is removed by default, with the Hall of Fame option relocated to where it was.
  • And just like the previous re-release, modifying the hegames.ini file on the Windows release to restore online play will restore the Treehouse to its original appearance except for the rug.
• The Al "Bucket Head" Smith and Parks Division champions trophies were added in the Hall of Fame's former spot. Oddly, the former is colored red instead of (as depicted in the Hall of Fame) silver.
• The NFL logo was removed from the rug on the floor, with the BFL logo centered to fill some of the space left behind.

Meet the Players#

Original	Backyard Football '99

The NFL logo on the pro players' cards and in the background were removed, with the BFL logo replacing the latter.

Team Bench#

Original	Backyard Football '99

The NFL Play Football logo was replaced with a generic Play Game icon.

Teams#

Original	Backyard Football '99

• Due to licensing issues with the NFL (possibly a result of EA's exclusive license), all of the pro NFL teams are replaced with custom ones, many of which are taken from other games in the series (some of which were notably NPC only teams):

• This also results in the pro players all being on different teams in season mode (when not on the player's team):

Players#

Original	Backyard Football '99

• Due to not having an NFL license, the pro players' uniforms changed colors.
• Brett Favre did not return for the remaster (for numerous reasons) and was replaced with Chuck Downfield's younger brother, Chase (who keeps Brett's stats).

Voice Differences#

To do: Rip all of the redubbed voices for both the custom replacement teams and Chase Downfield.

Similar with Baseball '01, lines that originally mentioned the pro NFL teams have been completely redubbed to match the new, custom teams. This also creates a jarring difference in voices, and it's not specified who did the new voices. Lindsay Barnett, the CEO of Playground Productions might've voiced Sunny Day and her new dialogue. It's unknown who did Chuck Downfield's new dialogue (this created a ton of confusion on the official Backyard Sports Discord server whether or not the new dialogue is A.I.-generated, as Chuck's new dialogue has a noticeable "filter" in it if one hears closely enough) and voiced Chase Downfield. Dmitri has an entirely new line that is not present in the original release as well, as he now forgets what he was about to say, which adds up to the licensing issues with the NFL. His new voice sounds a bit feminine by comparison and the lip-synching notably wasn't adjusted to match the new dialogue.

"Thanks for Everything" Note#

Like all of the other re-releases of the Humongous-developed games, the credits added a developer message for the original Humongous Entertainment company:

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.

Interestingly enough, the original developers are mentioned in the window bar when you quit the game.

References#