Backyard Baseball

"Grand Slam"

The Backyard Sports are great games, especially here on GameCube. Here's a few pointers on Backyard Baseball:

Graphics

Graphics are very interesting, with 3-D replays, provided after important plays like stolen bases and home runs. The characters themselves need a little work, but overall, the graphics are much better than the PC versions of Backyard Baseball and most other GameCube games, for that matter. I give this one a 10. And besides, these graphics look a lot more interesting than the real guys, don't they?

Sound

The sound effects are brilliant. Each character has their own theme song except for the pros, who share a few different songs. The theme song interferes sometimes with the character's actual voice, but if you want to hear them talk, you can always just go to their player card and press X. The voices are just fine, except for a few voices that don't quite sound like they should be. The commentator, Abner Dubbleplay, has some pretty interesting remarks like ''G-whack-a-mole!'' and ''I'm not sure this batter has what it takes to get the job done. Oh, yup, he's got the bat.'' Sound is a 9.5.

Control

Control is a little shaky. At first, aiming your pitches and bat is a little hard, and I, as a veteran player, can still not move that bat left to right. Sometimes, when you tell a batter to go to second, he goes to third and then he gets tagged out. It's really annoying. Control gets a shaky 7.

Character Selection

The batters number (I think) 40. That's plenty to choose a team of only 9. However, there are only ten pros: Pedro Martinez of the Red Sox, Randy Johnson of the Diamondbacks, Jim Thome of the Phillies (I wished he hadn't moved, I'm a native Ohioan), Shawn Green of the Dodgers (I don't even know this guy, but I'm not a fanatic of baseball), Alex Rodriguez of the Yankees (he was in the Rangers when this game was published), Derek Jeter of the Yankees, Sammy Sosa of the Cubs, Barry Bonds of the Giants, Ichiro of the Mariners, and Mike Piazza of the Mets. Character Selection gets a 9.

Comparison
To other Baseball games: guess it's a tie. They're more realistic, but hey, isn't it good to see different graphics once in a while?
To Backyard Baseball for GBA: Sorry, no comment. I haven't played it yet.
To BB for PC: huge win for GameCube. The graphics are a lot better, there's a new commentator, and there is more music. Who doesn't like music?

Overall

Backyard Baseball is a solid game. I'd give it a 9.5, but GameFaqs doesn't accept decimals.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 03/08/04