Backyard Sports return couldn't come at a better time

As I've opined on quite a bit recently, sports games are often so busy including new monetization features they forget to include the fun. That was never a problem with the Backyard Sports games, a franchise that started in 1997 with Backyard Baseball and expanded to include multiple sports.

Playground Productions today released a trailer announcing that the series will return with the "same look and feel" but updated with the modern features sports gamers expect. Please no card packs, please no card packs...

After characters such as Kenny Kawaguchi and Pablo Sanchez (one of the all-time great video game athletes) gained popularity, the franchise branched out and began working with pro sports leagues. They added kid versions of athletes such as Ken Griffey Jr. and Brett Favre.

A generation of fans still remembers these games fondly. Former Philadelphia Eagles star Jason Kelce shouted them out on his New Heights podcast earlier this year. The announcement notes that the company wants the characters to branch out into other forms of entertainment including movies and television.

While being based on a video game used to be a near guarantee of a movie's failure, the success of projects such as Super Mario Bros. and Sonic The Hedgehog show how well they can be done. There could be a huge market for the type of family-friendly entertainment the Backyard games have always provided.

Lindsey Barnett, founder of Backyard Productions, said she has always viewed media as the "largest classroom in the world." Backyard games always featured a diverse cast and allowed disabled characters to be part of the fun. Kenny Kawaguchi played in a wheelchair but was every bit as good as any other character.

New versions of games such as Backyard Baseball could also do wonders for arcade-style sports games. For every Rocket League that has succeeded in recent years, there have been 10 WWE Battlegrounds that tried and floundered.