First Look at ‘Backyard Baseball’ and Exclusive Details on New Game Dropping in July

For the first time in 15 years, the beloved Backyard Sports franchise is releasing a new game later this summer.

On July 9, Pablo Sanchez, Kiesha Phillips and the rest of the Backyard gang will be back on the baseball diamond in Playground Production’s all-new Backyard Baseball video game. Announced last month, it will be the first new video game entry to the series since Playground Productions brought back the iconic franchise in August 2024.

Earlier this week, Sports Illustrated caught up with Playground Productions CEO Lindsay Barnett to discuss a few exciting specifics that Backyard Sports fans can expect to see, including if MLB players will be featured in the new game. Read on:

There will be a multiplayer mode

Friends and families, rejoice! You can now play against each other in the new Backyard Baseball. Barnett told Sports Illustrated that multiplayer mode was the top request she heard from fans over the past two years.

“Having that communal experience together as a family is something that I really love,” Barnett said. “I think it’s also a good even playing field for kids to be able to beat their parents maybe for the first time.”

You can bet I’ll be taking my 11-month-old daughter yard with Pablo Sanchez as soon as she’s old enough to play. Anyways, moving on …

It will be a 3D game with 2D elements

Something that Barnett and Playground Production’s team of animators focused on as they designed the game was to have this new edition reflect the originals that made the Backyard Sports franchise so special, all while launching the game into the third dimension.

“Technology has come a long ways in 15 years; it’s really exciting what we’re able to deliver,” Barnett said. “Being able to do this as a 3D game also allows us to do camera movements and updates and all sorts of things that the 2D game was not going to be able to do.”

Still, though, there will be 2D elements in the new game for a more nostalgic feel—like the baseball card in the image below. And yes, that is your first look at Pablo Sanchez in the new game:

A first look at Pablo Sanchez in the new “Backyard Baseball” game. | Playground Productions

Back, back, back ... Introducing Backyard Derby mode

It’s just like MLB’s annual Home Run Derby—with a Backyard Sports twist.

“It’s really hard,” Barnett said. “Can you hit all of these wild card, power-up pitches thrown back-to-back-to-back? Millennials who grew up with the games are going to be really excited to see how competitive it is.”

There will be difficulty levels to appeal to all ages

In the February press release announcing the new Backyard Baseball game, Playground Productions called it the “most ambitious” entry in the Backyard Sports series yet. What makes it so ambitious? The wide range of difficulty levels in the new game.

“Most games in general have a very specific audience that they’re going after,” Barnett said. “They can say this game is for [a certain] age group. We don’t say that with ours because we have a very, very wide audience. ... For the millennials who grew up playing these and are between 27 and 40, we need to make sure that this is hard enough for them. We have competitive modes in this game, really for the first time. On the flip side, we still need to be really conscious that we are creating a game that if you have never played baseball before, and you’ve never played a video game before, you’re going to have a great experience with this. Having the full spectrum of gamers is a big challenge. We have delivered on that.”

A first look at Kiesha Phillips in the new “Backyard Baseball” game. | Playground Productions

You can play under the lights in night mode

In all of the previous Backyard Sports games, every contest has been played in the daylight. That’s changing in this new game with the addition of night mode, which will arrive with fireworks. Literally.

“Being able to see all of the different stadiums at night is so beautiful and creates a new part of the game, but it feels so nostalgic,” Barnett said. “… We also have a really cool thing that if you hit home runs during night mode, you get [to see] incredible fireworks that are special for each character. … The [home run] blimps can’t fly at night, so you have to do something else, and fireworks felt so Backyard and also so ’90s nostalgic.”

All 30 original Backyard Sports characters are back. And there are other characters to unlock

Pablo Sanchez, Stephanie Morgan, Kenny Kawaguchi and the rest of the original 30 Backyard Sports characters are back in this new game, designed to reflect their look and feel from the originals.

“I think we went through over 20 iterations of Pablo just to get his face-to-hat ratio correct,” Barnett said. “It was really, really important to us.”

But that’s not all. If you notice in the art below, Kenny Kawaguchi’s baseball card notes he is 19 of 33—meaning there are three unlockable characters in the game.

But who are those unlockable characters?

“It might be a couple different Backyard characters that might be available to play for the first time, or available to play again as unlockables,” Barnett said, giving fans a hint of who it could be. “There will be additional unlockables at launch. We’re also really excited about how to expand the universe as well through [downloadable content] as it goes on. This is not a live service game, but what we’re committed to is making sure that we always have interesting updates for fans, whether it’s athletes or comedians or influencers or whatever it might be that could appear in the Backyard. “

And now, for the biggest question of all …

Will there be MLB players in the new ‘Backyard Baseball’ game?

It sounds like that answer will be yes. Barnett didn’t reveal any names, but she did say this:

“MLB players were very important to the original game. With that said, there also were a lot of iconic players who are now retired who were in the game originally. They might not be current MLB players; they could be iconic MLB players, or a little bit of a mixture of both. I think fans are going to be able to see that in some of the unlockables and also possibly some DLC [downloadable content] down the road.”

There you have it. We’re counting down the days until July 9. I’ll see all of you at Steele Stadium.