2024 has seen the return of many great franchises. From Indiana Jones to EA Sports College Football, this year really has been the year of the comeback. Now, another blast from the past is on its way to making a big comeback.
Backyard Baseball ‘97
Playground Productions announced today that Backyard Baseball ’97 will release on Steam later this year. This will be a remaster of the original CD-ROM game that began the Backyard Sports franchise. The game will release on October 10th, 27 years to the day of the release of the original.
This remaster is being developed by Mega Cat Studios, the same developers behind 2023’s WrestleQuest. Since the source code for the original game had been lost since 1997, Mega Cat Studios had to hack an original CD-ROM of the game and make a completely new build to be compatible with moden PCs. Because of this, the remaster will only be available on PC at release, however Mega Cat Studios and Playground Productions plan to bring the series to more platforms as soon as possible.
“This was my favorite game growing up. While we’re already hard at work on the future of Backyard Sports, we first want to honor the past by restoring the games that started it all for me and so many others – beginning with Backyard Baseball 1997,” Playground Productions CEO Lindsay Barnett said in a press release.
The gameplay of Backyard Baseball ’97 will be identical to the original game. The remaster will not include real MLB players in it as later entries in the original series did. Hopefully a deal with the MLBPA can be reached for later entries so we can see guys like Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani go up against Pablo Sanchez.
There will also be Steam achievements and leaderboards included to track stats like home runs, strikeouts, etc. The game will release on Steam on October 10th for $9.99, and is currently available to be wishlisted.
