Earlier this month, the developers at Mega Cat Studios and the publishers at Playground Productions finally released Backyard Baseball ’97 on PlayStation and Switch consoles. Unfortunately for Xbox fans, that console was missing from the initial blast, making it the final major platform Backyard Baseball ’97 is missing from. As you’d expect, fans have been asking on social media if an Xbox version is coming, and recently, the developers have shared an official update.
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The official Backyard Baseball Twitter account told fans, “We are trying our best to get Backyard Baseball on Xbox. We don’t have the original source code for this title. We’re [bringing] this game back through reverse engineering and CD-ROM hacking. At the moment, it’s not working properly on Xbox. We’re trying our best to make it playable.”
From this update, it’s clear that the team wants Backyard Baseball ’97 on Xbox platforms. However, the lack of source code is holding back progress. We’ve known since the original announcement that Mega Cat doesn’t have access to the source code, which is likely why the rollout has been staggered between consoles. The developers are also working on getting remasters of the other Backyard Sports games ready, so it’s not a huge surprise that it’s taking some time to get everything ready for launch.
The good news is that Mega Cat and Playground Productions seem committed to eventually getting Backyard Baseball ’97 on Xbox. They don’t have a timetable for when we should expect to hear more, but at worst, we’ll probably hear more over the next few months, assuming the team makes a breakthrough and isn’t forced to leave the Xbox version behind.
Either way, Mega Cat is hard at work on the next Backyard Sports remasters. In the comments on the Twitter post, someone asked about Backyard Baseball ’01 and its source code. The developers responded with a cryptic, but telling, “Hmm. Guess you’ll find out this summer.”
We’ve known that Backyard Baseball ’01 is the next game in the pipeline for a few months now. We also know that Playground Productions has signed several athletes’ likenesses for future releases. Backyard Baseball ’01 is the first game in the baseball series to add real-world players, so getting those likenesses squared away was an important step.
It’ll be fun to see if they’ve secured everyone, as guys like Barry Bonds notoriously don’t appear in many video games. Plus, several players (including Bonds) have caught flak over the years for steroid use, keeping them out of the Hall of Fame. That hasn’t stopped MLB The Show from including Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire, so we expect any issues. In fact, McGwire is already confirmed to have a likeness deal, but it’s still something to keep an eye on.
Hopefully, we’ll have a release date for Backyard Baseball ’01 relatively soon. While you wait, the first two games in the franchise, Backyard Baseball ’97 and Backyard Soccer ’98, are currently available on PC. Baseball is also available on mobile devices, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch. Soccer will come to the other platforms eventually, but as mentioned, porting these games is something of a process given the lack of original source code.
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