| Backyard Basketball | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Humongous Entertainment (original) Mega Cat Studios (remaster)[1] |
| Publisher(s) | Infogrames Playground Productions (remaster)[2] |
| Series | Backyard Sports |
| Engine | SCUMM |
| Platform(s) | Windows,Mac |
| Release | Original (Windows,Mac)
'01 remaster (Windows)
|
| Genre(s) | Sports |
| Mode(s) | Single-player,multiplayer |
Backyard Basketball is a series of entries into theBackyard Sports franchise of video games. The first game was developed byHumongous Entertainment and published byInfogrames forMicrosoft Windows andMac in 2001. Additional games have been released on a variety of consoles, each with different characters and slightly altered gameplay mechanics.
As with the otherBackyard Sports games,Backyard Basketball includes professional players as playable characters. The first incarnation includedKevin Garnett andLisa Leslie. The most recent release includesStephen Curry as its mascot.[3]
Backyard Basketball has two primary modes of gameplay: Single Game, which allows the player to select a team to compete against a computer-controlled team, and Season Play, which allows the player to select a team to compete against a series of computer-controlled teams over an 18-game season, including two best-of-three playoff series and a best-of-five championship series should the player achieve a large number of victories. The Single Game mode also allows the player to compete against a second player or to practice using a single character.
Before games can occur, the player has the option to modify a variety of settings. These include court selection, A.I. difficulty (easy, medium, or hard), the presence of certain rules (fouls, fatigue, violations, shot control, and power-ups), sound options (game music, background sounds, and in-game dialogue), controls, and team names. Team modification also involves the customization of jerseys.
The game's controls are set to mouse usage by default, capitalizing on a point & click style of gameplay to move characters around. The game is also compatible with keyboards and game pads.
The selection of team members follows one of two settings: First Five Picks, which allows each player to select their team members freely, or Full Draft, which forces each player to select their team members one at a time in an alternating fashion. Each potential team member, including younger versions of Kevin Garnett and Lisa Leslie, is ranked according to five statistics operating on a 1 to 10 scale. These include Inside Shooting (the relative accuracy of the character's shot from inside the three-point line), Outside Shooting (the relative accuracy of the character's shot from beyond the three-point line), Ballhandling (the relative likelihood that the character will not have the ball stolen or blocked on offense), Defense (the relative likelihood that the character will be able to steal or block the ball on defense), and Quickness (the relative speed at which the character moves along the court). Players also have the option to customize rookie characters with either manually chosen or randomly allocated statistics, as well as heights, skin tones, shooting hands, birthdays, and names. Although rookie characters generally have lower overall statistics compared to pre-rendered players, they have the additional ability to increase all of their statistics by three levels should the player's team make the playoffs in Season Play.
Gameplay inBackyard Basketball is set to a point & click control scheme by default. With three characters on the court at one time, the player clicks at various locations on the court to guide the character with the ball to that location. Clicking on a teammate causes the character to pass the ball to that teammate while clicking the basket (indicated by a basketball icon) causes the character to attempt a shot. If shot control is on, then players have the option to make the shooting character pump fake by clicking rapidly, finally shooting the ball when the click is held down. If shot control is off, then the character will automatically release the shot once the basketball icon is clicked. On defense, the player can switch between characters to control by clicking on them as they run about, guiding the chosen character by clicking the location on the court where he or she should go. If an opposing character is clicked when an 'X' symbol hovers by them, the character nearest him or her will attempt to steal the ball. If a pair of hands appears near the basket when an opposing character goes to shoot the ball, the nearest character will attempt to block the shot or rebound the ball.
| Backyard Basketball 2004 | |
|---|---|
 North American PS2 cover art with a kid version ofTim Duncan along with his real-life adult counterpart. | |
| Developer(s) | Humongous Entertainment (Windows) SolWorks (PS2) Mistic Software (GBA) |
| Publisher(s) | Atari |
| Series | Backyard Sports |
| Engine | Yaga |
| Platform(s) | Windows,PlayStation 2,Game Boy Advance |
| Release | Windows
Game Boy Advance
|
| Genre(s) | Sports |
| Mode(s) | Single-player,multiplayer |
Each quarter of a game lasts approximately three minutes while each overtime period (if necessary) lasts approximately one minute. The longer characters play without rest, the more tired and prone to mistakes (poor shooting and ball-handling) they will be as such, substitutions can be made after any completed play or during a time-out. Characters will recover their energy while on the bench (only two players can stay on the bench at a time). Granted, a character's energy will never decrease if the fatigue option is turned off.
Over the course of a game, power-ups may occasionally be rewarded to teams. The majority of these power-ups are useful, such as the flaming ball (which guarantees that the next attempted shot will go in), the tornado (which increases the speed of all characters on the court), the doughnut (which causes the next character who attempts a shot to automatically attempt a slam dunk), and 110% Juice (which provides energy to otherwise tired players if the fatigue option is turned on). Some power-ups, however, provide detrimental effects, such as the icy ball (which makes shots more likely to miss), the stick of butter (which reduces the team's ball-handling abilities), and the ice cream truck (which prevents the entire team from moving for a brief period of time).
A month before the release ofBackyard Baseball,Humongous Entertainment announcedBackyard Soccer andBackyard Basketball as follow-up games, with the latter being planned for release in 1999.[4]Backyard Football was released in 1999, whileBackyard Basketball was delayed.[5] The game was eventually released forWindows andMacintosh two years later in 2001, featuringKevin Garnett as the game's primary mascot, andLisa Leslie.[6]
A secondBackyard Basketball installment entitledBackyard Basketball 2004 was released in 2003 for Windows andPlayStation 2 and in 2004 forGame Boy Advance, featuringTim Duncan as its primary mascot.[7][8] The PlayStation 2 version was released in Europe under the name ofJunior Sports Basketball, although it lacked any license from theNBA, and the Backyard Kids were redubbed with British voice actors.[9]
A thirdBackyard Basketball installment with the titleBackyard Sports: NBA Basketball 2007 was released for Game Boy Advance in 2006 and for Windows, PlayStation 2, andNintendo DS in 2007, featuringPaul Pierce as its primary mascot.[10] A planned release for theGameCube was cancelled.[11]
A fourth installment entitledBackyard Sports: NBA Basketball 2015 was released in early 2015 for mobile devices, featuringStephen Curry as its primary mascot.[3]
A remastered version of the originalBackyard Basketball installment under the titleBackyard Basketball '01 is planned for release onSteam.[12]
| Backyard Sports: NBA Basketball 2007 | |
|---|---|
 Windows cover withPaul Pierce | |
| Developer(s) | Game Brains (PS2, Windows) Mistic Software (GBA, DS) |
| Publisher(s) | Atari |
| Series | Backyard Sports |
| Platform(s) | Game Boy Advance,Windows,PlayStation 2,Nintendo DS |
| Release | |
| Genre(s) | Sports |
| Mode(s) | Single-player,multiplayer |
In the United States, the debut version ofBackyard Basketball sold 780,000 copies and earned $13.2 million by August 2006, after its release in October 2001. It was the country's 15th best-selling computer game between January 2000 and August 2006. Combined sales of allBackyard Sports games released between January 2000 and August 2006, includingBackyard Basketball, had reached 5.3 million units in the United States by the latter date.[13]
Backyard Basketball has received low to mixed reviews throughout its multiple releases. Ivan Sulic ofIGN awarded the original version a score of 6.5 out of 10, complimenting the simplistic gameplay and colorful graphics while lamenting the amount of crashes that the game is susceptible to encountering.[14] Chris Adams ofIGN awarded the 2007Nintendo DS version the same score, commenting that the addition of new gameplay modes offered more variety.[15]