“The recurring characters were legitimately funny, and each one had his or her own unique personality I could identify with. These were no computer avatars made up of cold and uncaring pixels; these familiar characters had memorable names and personalities I still reference with my friends today.” —Leo Traub
Before I was exposed to Call of Duty, Assassin’s Creed or Madden, Humongous Entertainment’s Backyard Sports franchise reigned supreme.
Growing up in a ’90s household that had no gaming console for the TV, my only escape to the video game dimension was to boot up the ol’ computer and load a CD-ROM. As such, my two siblings and I, ever craving the latest virtual distractions, stocked up on CD games for our house. Years of birthdays, Hanukkahs and other occasions filled a couple of nylon binders with CDs, and I was soon familiar with a whole cast of characters from Humongous Entertainment games: Putt-Putt, Freddi Fish, Pajama Sam and Spy Fox, among others.
But the most widely known Humongous characters came from one of my favorite series: Backyard Sports.
I owned every game in the original series and can tell you from experience that they were all consistently fun. Though Backyard Baseball was my favorite, I played my seasons in Backyard Soccer, Backyard Football, Backyard Basketball and Backyard Hockey over and over again.
These games had wide appeal and could please any kid with a computer. Without overwhelming users with mature concepts such as strategy and statistics, the Backyard Sports games gave their audience, namely kids ages 5 to 10, the chance to feel the excitement of coaching a sports team. All of the athletes, including the few professionals sprinkled in, were youthful cartoon characters, and the team names were hilarious. (Should I be the Mighty Hornets? Or the Crazy Wombats? What about the Super-Duper Melonheads?)
The recurring characters were legitimately funny, and each one had his or her own unique personality I could identify with. These were no computer avatars made up of cold and uncaring pixels; these familiar characters had memorable names and personalities I still reference with my friends today. There was short, Spanish-speaking Pablo Sanchez, who was always the obvious first pick in a game. (The computer getting first pick and taking Pablo before me usually prompted me to quit in rage.) And Pete Wheeler was the simple ginger boy who was lightning fast despite being born with an oblong head that strangely had no effect on his aerodynamics.
Though I never really followed professional sports, the eventual addition of young professional players to the Backyard Sports franchise’s roster did excite me. The thought of playing as a young Derek Jeter, Brett Favre or Kevin Garnett drew me to my computer on a daily basis and taught me famous names to reference with my more sports-savvy friends.
I fondly recall my time spent with Pablo, Pete and the rest of the gang, playing the Backyard Sports games on my family’s computer. Resting in the halls of the millennial generation’s nostalgia with the likes of cartoons such as Doug and Hey Arnold! and bands such as Smash Mouth and blink-182, the Backyard Sports family will always hold a dear place in the hearts of ’90s kids.
