October 28, 1999
Backyard Football is an American football video game developed and published by Humongous Entertainment. It is the third installment of the Backyard Sports franchise, and the first installment of the Backyard Football series. Backyard Football became the first Backyard Sports title to include teams from a major league and real-life sports players, which would become a tradition for almost every other Backyard Sports game to follow. Backyard Football was released for Microsoft Windows and Mac via a hybrid CD-ROM on October 28, 1999. Similar to most other installments in the Backyard Sports franchise, Backyard Football was followed up by various sequels. A re-release of this game, retitled as Backyard Football '99, is planned to launch on Steam in the future. Steve Young appears on the game's cover of the original release, redrawn as a kid.
Gameplay
Backyard Football is an American football video game with five-on-five play designed to be simple to use for children. The game contains three game modes: Single Game, Season Play, and Online Play. Hall of Fame records and player cards are also visible on the home screen.
When playing a single game, the player can select one of five playable football fields, adjust the game's weather conditions, and play against either the AI or another player. Along with the 30 "Backyard Kids", Backyard Football includes eight young versions of NFL players as playable characters, being Jerry Rice, Randall Cunningham, Brett Favre, Barry Sanders, John Elway, Dan Marino, Steve Young and Drew Bledsoe. Other features are the ability to choose NFL teams from the 1999 season, and the option to create a custom player to play in a game. Play-by-play commentary is done by Sunny Day with fictional color commentator Chuck Downfield. The player has many offensive and defensive plays to choose from, as well as a few power-up plays.
In Season Play, the player drafts a 7-player team using either NFL or custom team branding through the "Backyard Football League", a 16 team, four division league based on the National Football League. If the team manages to win their division or be a conference wild card, they can qualify for the playoffs where the player's team can attempt to beat the other conference champion in the "Super Colossal Cereal Bowl", a spoof on the real life Super Bowl. Throughout the mode, the player can track and print season standings, player statistics and league leaders. They can also practice playing football against a robot team called the Tackling Dummies in between games.
In Online Play, players could connect to a website, known as the Junior Sports Network, allowing them to be able to play against other people around the world. This online mode, only available on Windows, featured many different modes of difficulties and rulesets. This feature was also included with Backyard Baseball 2001. However, when Humongous Entertainment was acquired by Infogrames in 2002, the servers were shut down due to underuse.
Also See
- Backyard Football 2001
- Backyard Football 2002
- Backyard Football (GBA)
- Backyard Football (GCN)
- Backyard Football 2004
- Backyard Football 2006
- Backyard Sports Football 2007
- Backyard Football '08
- Backyard Football '09
- Backyard Football '10
- Backyard Sports: Rookie Rush
- Backyard Football '99
Sound Effects Used
- Sound Ideas, APPLAUSE, CHEERING - INDOOR: LARGE CONVENTION CROWD, AUDIENCE
- Sound Ideas, BOING, CARTOON - SPROING 01
- Sound Ideas, HIT, CARTOON - HOLLOW METALLIC HEAD KONK 01
- Sound Ideas, HIT, CARTOON - HOLLOW METALLIC HEAD KONK 02
- Sound Ideas, HIT, CARTOON - HOLLOW METALLIC HEAD KONK AND HORN
- Sound Ideas, ZIP, CARTOON - BIG WHISTLE ZING IN