Backyard Sports: Sandlot Sluggers
© 2010 Atari
This year's edition of the long-running Backyard Sports baseball series simulations continues the tradition of being fun and easy to play, but it has one important difference from the prior years. There are no child-versions of professional players, and any connection to major league baseball is missing. While you can design your own player, you don't have as much control over the player roster. There's plenty of gender/ethnic options when creating a team, which give the game an inviting feel. When you're pitching, you get to choose the type of pitch, as well as the hardness of the throw. When batting, you slide the stylus on the screen in order to try to hit the ball, which takes some getting used to. In the DS version, which we reviewed, there were eight fields options, plus a story mode, a homerun derby, a season mode, and the ability to have a quick game. All things considered, this is another solid and easy to play baseball simulation in the Backyard series. While it doesn't have some of the content and features of previous years, our testers said it was definitely worth borrowing. Created by HB Studios and Powerhead Games for Atari.
$30, Wii, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS
Teaches: Baseball
CTR Rating: 84%