Backyard Soccer

The second game in the Backyard Sports line, Backyard Soccer has the lovable cast joining a soccer league this time, advancing through three divisions in order to reach for the Shiny Cup of All Cups Trophy.

If the previous game was repetitive to you, this one will definitely make you tear your hair out. At the absolute minimum, to make it to the very end you have to play 45 games. And that's not even counting if you want to play the optional tournament. What's worse, this game is extremely low in difficulty, regardless of the level you play on. Even on Hard, the AI barely cares and will happily let you score goals day in and day out. Call it a kids' game, but the AI in the other games cared a whole lot more than this, and in fact Hard mode actually gave you a decent challenge.

To make matters worse, none of these problems were ever corrected in the future installments.

Unused Text
Like most Humongous games, there are unused subtitles for all the dialog in the game's resources. However, like Backyard Baseball, "TextOn=1" does not turn them on this time around. ScummVM is the only possible way to see them.

Debug Mode
This game, like many other Humongous games, has a debug mode...but due to the nature of this game, there are no debug rooms or item select screens. They only turn on the debug commands. To enable it, add one of the following to hegames.ini: Striker=15 Striker=42 Striker=69 Striker=666 Striker=999

They will enable the following debug commands:


 * Fast Mode - with debug mode enabled, press Ctrl + F to enable fast mode on the original interpreter. It puts everything in turbo speed.
 * Room Goto - press Ctrl + G to bring up the room goto box.
 * Object Pickup - Ctrl + O prompts which object number you want to pick up.
 * Change Variable - pressing Ctrl + E first asks for a variable number to change, then gives the value of that variable and prompts the user for a new value to set it to.

Area 51 1/2


By adding the line area-103-halves-enabled=1

to hegames.ini, the special field shown above will be available for play in a pick-up game. It was probably chosen to be cut for being out-of-place in a neighborhood setting.

Collision Map and Unused UI


By typing "4" in the room goto window or typing "room 4" in ScummVM's debugger, a collision map of one of the fields is shown (it seems to be the Off-the-Wall Indoor Invitational map). It flickers constantly though and hardly seems to serve a purpose. It is also very low-functioning in ScummVM as a developer has stated it requires extra coding that isn't worth it. Additionally, the UI on this screen is from Backyard Baseball rather than Soccer, though it's likely just a leftover.

Season Debugger


By adding the line season debugger=1

to hegames.ini, this screen will appear upon signing into a season. It displays the names of all the opposing teams and their players, and was likely used as a debugging feature.