Jewel case variant of the cover art featuring a child version of Steve Young (background) and Backyard Sports characters Jocinda Smith (foreground, left) and Amir Khan (foreground, right).
Backyard Football is an American footballvideo game developed and published by Humongous Entertainment. It is the third installment of the Backyard Sports franchise, and the first installment of the Backyard Football series. Backyard Football became the first Backyard Sports title to include teams from a major league and real-life sports players, which would become a tradition for almost every other Backyard Sports game to follow. Backyard Football was released for Microsoft Windows and Mac via a hybrid CD-ROM on October 28, 1999.[1] Similar to most other installments in the Backyard Sports franchise, Backyard Football was followed up by various sequels. A re-release of this game, retitled as Backyard Football '99, is planned to launch on Windows (via Steam) and mobile devices in the fall of 2025.[2][3]Steve Young appears on the game's cover of the original release, redrawn as a kid.
Backyard Football is an American footballvideo game with five-on-five play designed to be simple to use for children.[4] The game contains three game modes: Single Game, Season Play, and Online Play. Hall of Fame records and player cards are also visible on the home screen.[4]
When playing a single game, the player can select one of five playable football fields, adjust the game's weather conditions, and play against either the AI or another player.[5] Along with the 30 "Backyard Kids", Backyard Football includes eight young versions of NFL players as playable characters, being Jerry Rice, Randall Cunningham, Brett Favre, Barry Sanders, John Elway, Dan Marino, Steve Young and Drew Bledsoe.[6] Other features are the ability to choose NFL teams from the 1999 season,[1] and the option to create a custom player to play in a game. Play-by-play commentary is done by Sunny Day with fictional color commentator Chuck Downfield.[7] The player has many offensive and defensive plays to choose from, as well as a few power-up plays.[8]
In Season Play, the player drafts a 7-player team using either NFL or custom team branding through the "Backyard Football League", a 16 team, four division league based on the National Football League. If the team manages to win their division or be a conference wild card, they can qualify for the playoffs where the player's team can attempt to beat the other conference champion in the "Super Colossal Cereal Bowl", a spoof on the real life Super Bowl. Throughout the mode, the player can track and print season standings, player statistics and league leaders.[9] They can also practice playing football against a robot team called the Tackling Dummies in between games.[8]
In Online Play, players could connect to a website, known as the Junior Sports Network, allowing them to be able to play against other people around the world. This online mode, only available on Windows, featured many different modes of difficulties and rulesets.[10][11][12] This feature was also included with Backyard Baseball 2001.[13] However, when Humongous Entertainment was acquired by Infogrames in 2002, the servers were shut down due to underuse.[14]
Backyard Football's NFL license led to further Backyard Sports games to include sports licenses, including Backyard Baseball 2001 and Backyard Soccer MLS Edition, which were both released in 2000, following Backyard Football's launch.[17]Backyard Football also spawned a series of sequels, starting with Backyard Football 2002.[18] In 2021, a fan-made patch for Backyard Football was made available with ScummVM that relaunched online play.[19][20]
In 2024, former professional football player Jason Kelce announced through his and his brother Travis Kelce's podcast New Heights his intentions on acquiring the Backyard Sports franchise, including rebooting Backyard Football and Backyard Baseball.[21] These plans never came into fruition as the rights were already purchased back in 2021 by producers Ari Pinchot and Stuart Avi Savitsky.[22] Later the same year, the franchise was rebooted by Playground Productions.[22]Backyard Football is planned to be remastered on Windows (via Steam) and mobile devices as Backyard Football '99 by Mega Cat Studios and Playground Productions as part of a plan to reboot the Backyard Sports franchise.[23][3]
Backyard Football had received positive reviews from critics. John Lee of MacHome rated the game 4 out of 5 stars, praising the gameplay and inclusion of NFL players, but he expressed disappointment at the fact that only eight of those players were included in the game.[24] Lisa Karen Savignano of Allgame also rated the game 4 out of 5 stars, citing the game's good use of cartoonish graphics and the game's very high replay value.[25] Greg Weston from Mac Gamer gave it 90%, detailing the simple pick-up gameplay and value but criticizing the Windows-only online mode and the repetitiveness of the gameplay.[8]
† Backyard Sports was removed from Humongous Entertainment's control in 2005. That series is currently owned (since 2021) by Backyard Sports LLC and handled (since 2024) by Playground Productions.
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