While navigating through the hustle and bustle of PAX East 2026, I stumbled across a pleasant surprise. Tucked away in the corner was the Backyard Baseball, a remake of the 90s-00s children’s baseball game for the PC. I didn’t have any personal attachment to the franchise; most of my childhood gaming time was split between Chex Quest and Lego Island, but a friend boots up a game of Backyard Baseball ‘97 and stream it on Discord; so I knew enough about it to be surprised to see it at a games convention in 2026.
Discovering Backyard Baseball
I popped by to see if they had any merch on sale that I could grab for him, and while waiting in line, I began observing the line of people waiting to play the demo. This line was packed. One of the easiest ways to gauge anticipation for a game – especially at a convention – is to see what people are saying about it before they play it. To my surprise, just about everyone in the line was chatting about their childhoods and fond memories with the original series.
Stories of how Backyard Baseball ’97 was their favorite to play when rainy days closed the actual baseball field or Backyard Football helping them understand Thanksgiving football with their family. According to the developers at Playground Productions, this is has been the energy since the classic ports were announced, and this outpouring from the fans is what led to the creation of the new Backyard Baseball.
After a solid run between 1997 and 2005 the property license for the Backyard Sports series got lost in a shuffle of corporate buyouts, mergers and reshuffling. leaving it dormant. This is unfortunately a common thread amongst a lot of early computer games with rights and license holders lost to the sands of time. But the Backyard series was saved from this fate by Lindsay Barnett, a Chicago area 2nd grade school teacher who was looking for new ways to teach her kids about sports. Finding that the games were a perfect fit for her classroom but disheartened by the difficulty in obtaining a copy of the game, Lindsay hired a private investigator to track down the license holders and try to buy the rights to the series.
Reviving a classic PC darling
Following months of seeking out the current rights holders, a deal was struck. Lindsay obtained the rights and formed Playground Productions: a children’s educational multi-media entertainment company with herself as its CEO. Work began immediately on porting the original games to Steam; though with the original source code lost their partners at Mega Cat Studios needed to rip the data from released copies of the game. This includes reverse engineering new patches and fixes for decades old bugs and adding new features – such as Steam achievements and a new global leaderboard.
And in 2024, the remastered version of Backyard Baseball ‘97 launched to critical acclaim – even achieving the coveted rank of “overwhelmingly positive” user reviews on Steam. Riding that excitement, Playground Productions kept their work up; porting over Backyard Soccer, Basketball, Football and Hockey. At first, the team was satisfied with bringing the games back for teachers and their students to enjoy. But looking through all the glowing comments and reviews left on Steam and social media, filled with tales childhood nostalgia and excitement to share the games with the next generation, Playground Productions and Mega Cat Studios set out to make a whole new game in the franchise.
Backyard Baseball has an actually positive fanbase!
Playground Productions revealed the new Backyard Baseball at the end of a Backyard Sports animated special, and immediately the team was blown away with excitement from both longtime and new fans. This new edition will be a real evolution, transitioning from the 2D sprites of the original to 3D models for the modern age while retaining the classic art style and charm the series has become known for. The team is introducing new gameplay elements and accessibility features to ensure anyone can play, regardless of previous video game or baseball knowledge.
Now at PAX , the team was excited to debut their first demo of the game to the public, and that’s where I stumbled into the story. So far, buzz from the audience is very positive. Head of Marketing at Playground Productions Matthew Berk tells me that the whole team is floored by people coming out in droves to send their love and support in person; even their merch table had sold out of their 4 days worth of supply in under an hour during the first day (much to my chagrin.) Walking away from the booth with a better understanding of the series and how much it means to people, I’m now excited to sit in one one of those Backyard Baseball ‘97 Discord streams and watch some of my buddies relive the old days.
A completely off chance encounter turned into my favorite PAX interaction this year.
Backyard Baseball releases July 9th, 2026 on Steam, Xbox Series consoles, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch.
Featured images Playground Productions/Mega Cat Studios
