Backyard Baseball was my first opportunity to design an entire games UI, the look, feel and the layout. This was one of my favorite games of all time, and my designer, Nick Mirkovich was awesome to put this in my hands and let me get to it. It was also supposed to support other sports with minimal redesign. The resolution sure has come a long way!
This screen sets up the world series matchup, of the game you are about to play.
Ah yes, Ken Griffey Jr. as a kid…playing for the Blue Bombers. You can see here that everything you need for the team you created is available with the tabs. One thing we really wanted to do here was make this game have that kind of accessibility, and not send players down long alleyways that they had to back out from.
You have to pick a team…this league, the other league or create a team…all one click away.
Baseball 2001 was the first game that we had pros (as kids) in it. It started a long tradition of dealing directly with the MLB and MLB players union to select the best players to represent them. Here you see The Big Unit, he’s a pretty good pitcher.
Batting Practice. This screen shows how you could set up a batting practice and pick a field and all of the settings.
No Backyard Sport is complete without this guy. The Secret Weapon-Pablo Sanchez. Pablo was honored by the Bleacher Report as one of the top 50 video game athletes of all time. I guess he’s not so secret after all.
Erik Haldi 