Backyard Baseball
© 2004 Humongous Entertainment
Sports simulations abound, but those appropriate for children are rare. In fact, this is the first we've seen with children as players. First you select a team name and then pick your team. You can choose from 30 neighborhood children, each with four abilities: batting, running, pitching and fielding. The best part is that each player has his or her own personality, and there are equal number of boys and girls to choose from, several races represented and one child in a wheelchair. Next, you start playing the games. These can be customized a great deal. For example, you can turn off the crowd sounds or adjust the difficulty level of hitting. There's even a T-ball mode! Games can be saved, which is good as they can easily take up to 30 minutes from start to finish. When your team is at bat, you select options that control when your player swings, and how hard. Like real baseball, striking out is easy, which frustrated children at first. We thought that the game should be easier to use when first starting out. In all cases, the longer our testers spent with this program, the more they grew involved with the players and liked the experience. There's also a nice amount of baseball strategy and information mixed into the game. For example, you can observe the various pitches and then test different stances when batting. In all, this is a very entertaining program that will keep even non-baseball fans engaged, providing they get past the first few games. Note that a Playstation 2 version is also available, with slightly different features, smoother feeling gameplay, and different graphics.
$19.95, Win 95, Win 3.1, Mac OS (CD-ROM), PlayStation 2
Teaches: sports, physical education, baseball, timing, strategy