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Backyard Baseball (Windows, Mac OS Classic)

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Title Screen

Backyard Baseball

Also known as: Backyard Baseball '97 (Steam)
Developers: Humongous Entertainment (original), Mega Cat Studios (Steam)
Publishers: Humongous Entertainment (original), Playground Productions (Steam}
Platforms: Windows, Mac OS Classic
Released in US: 1997 (original), October 10, 2024 (Steam)


GraphicsIcon.png This game has unused graphics.
SoundIcon.png This game has unused sounds.
TextIcon.png This game has unused text.
DebugIcon.png This game has debugging material.


Hmmm...
To do:
See if the Steam re-release has any differences.

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 BATHEYBATTERBATTERBATTER!!!

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.

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 BackyardBaseball placeholder-kimmy.png BackyardBaseball final-kimmy.png Ronny Dobbs BackyardBaseball placeholder-ronny.png BackyardBaseball final-ronny.png
Maria Luna BackyardBaseball placeholder-maria.png BackyardBaseball final-maria.png Achmed Khan BackyardBaseball placeholder-achmed.png BackyardBaseball final-achmed.png
Angela Delvecchio BackyardBaseball placeholder-angela.png BackyardBaseball final-angela.png Amir Khan BackyardBaseball placeholder-amir.png BackyardBaseball final-amir.png
Vicki Kawaguchi BackyardBaseball placeholder-vicki.png BackyardBaseball final-vicki.png Kenny Kawaguchi BackyardBaseball placeholder-kenny.png BackyardBaseball final-kenny.png
Gretchen Hasselhoff BackyardBaseball placeholder-gretchen.png BackyardBaseball final-gretchen.png Pete Wheeler BackyardBaseball placeholder-pete.png BackyardBaseball final-pete.png
Sally Dobbs BackyardBaseball placeholder-sally.png BackyardBaseball final-sally.png Dmitri Petrovich BackyardBaseball placeholder-dmitri.png BackyardBaseball final-dmitri.png
Billy Jean Blackwood BackyardBaseball placeholder-billyjean.png BackyardBaseball final-billyjean.png Ricky Johnson BackyardBaseball placeholder-ricky.png BackyardBaseball final-ricky.png
Ashley Webber BackyardBaseball placeholder-ashley.png BackyardBaseball final-ashley.png Marky Dubois BackyardBaseball placeholder-marky.png BackyardBaseball final-marky.png
Sidney Webber BackyardBaseball placeholder-sidney.png BackyardBaseball final-sidney.png Reese Worthington BackyardBaseball placeholder-reese.png BackyardBaseball final-reese.png
Kiesha Phillips BackyardBaseball placeholder-kiesha.png BackyardBaseball final-kiesha.png Pablo Sanchez BackyardBaseball placeholder-pablo.png BackyardBaseball final-pablo.png
Stephanie Morgan BackyardBaseball placeholder-stephanie.png BackyardBaseball final-stephanie.png Tony Delvecchio BackyardBaseball placeholder-tony.png BackyardBaseball final-tony.png
Luanne Lui BackyardBaseball placeholder-luanne.png BackyardBaseball final-luanne.png Jorge Garcia BackyardBaseball placeholder-jorge.png BackyardBaseball final-jorge.png
Annie Frazier BackyardBaseball placeholder-annie.png BackyardBaseball final-annie.png Dante Robinson BackyardBaseball placeholder-dante.png BackyardBaseball final-dante.png
Jocinda Smith BackyardBaseball placeholder-jocinda.png BackyardBaseball final-jocinda.png Ernie Steele BackyardBaseball placeholder-ernie.png BackyardBaseball final-ernie.png
Lisa Crocket BackyardBaseball placeholder-lisa.png BackyardBaseball final-lisa.png Mikey Thomas BackyardBaseball placeholder-mikey.png BackyardBaseball final-mikey.png

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.

Backyard Baseball Talkies.png

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.

BackyardBaseball room-22-bg.png

Room 22 contains the batting animations and this quirky message.

BackyardBaseball room-25-bg.png

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
BackyardBaseball interface-early.png BackyardBaseball interface-final.png

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
BackyardBaseball infield-fly-early.png BackyardBaseball infield-fly-final.png

A placeholder version of the infield fly rule screen.

BackyardBaseball interface-early-2.png

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
BackyardBaseball park-2.png BackyardBaseball park-2-collision.png

Dirt Yards

Regular Overlaid
BackyardBaseball park-0.png BackyardBaseball park-0-collision.png

Eckman Acres

Regular Overlaid
BackyardBaseball park-3.png BackyardBaseball park-3-collision.png

Playground Commons

Regular Overlaid
BackyardBaseball park-1.png BackyardBaseball park-1-collision.png

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
BackyardBaseball park-9.png BackyardBaseball park-9-collision.png
BackyardBaseball park-9-collision-component.png

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

Steele Stadium

Regular Overlaid
BackyardBaseball park-6.png BackyardBaseball park-6-collision.png

Parks Department Field No. 2

Regular Overlaid
BackyardBaseball park-8.png BackyardBaseball park-8-collision.png

Big City Stadium

Regular Overlaid
BackyardBaseball park-4.png BackyardBaseball park-4-collision.png

Super Colossal Dome

Regular Overlaid
BackyardBaseball park-5.png BackyardBaseball park-5-collision.png

Miscellaneous

Early Final
BackyardBaseball tournament-icon-temp.png BackyardBaseball tournament-icon-final.png

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

PuttPuttZoo saveload unknown.png

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

Elementary, my dear Cactus.
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.

Background with the control widget "baked in". The real object's graphic.

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

Hmmm...
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.

File Subtitles File Subtitles
Anyways...
All right, then.
Okay, then...
Are you sure you want to quit the game?
Are you sure you want to delete this team?
Are you sure you want to do that?
Are you sure?
Are you sure you want to stop?
Do you want to save the game?
...nothing.
You pick first
You pick second
You are the home team.
That means you pitch first.
You are the away team.
That means you bat first

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.

File Subtitles
steps up.
comes to the plate.

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.

File Subtitles
The force is off, so the best play is at first.
I think this pitcher should mix up the pitches a bit, because the batter's going to figure it out if you keep throwing the same pitch.
Gotta keep an eye on that juice meter. When the juice is low, so is the pitcher's accuracy.
Might want to try changing up the batting stance...

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

File Subtitles
What's this? Where's she going?
Hey! He's going the wrong way!
Wait a minute... what's happening here?
What's going on here?

Vinnie

File Subtitles
Can you believe that? She's heading backwards!
Maybe he has to go to the bathroom.
Well, Sunny, we've got one confused kid out there!
My, oh my! She's running in the wrong direction!
You gotta wonder what's going on in his head.

"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.

File Subtitles
and a miss!
and a miss... Strike 1
and a miss... Strike 2
and a miss... Strike 3

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

Hmmm...
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.