The image is iconic. A smiling, chubby, cartoon child in a banana-yellow backward hat. Two jet-black eyes just below the hat’s blue brim dot the center of his head the size of a prize-winning pumpkin.
On that massive melon, which is responsible for more than half the kid’s body, lies an elongated grin shaped like a boomerang. An ill-fitting white T-shirt with red trim, revealing a paunch and a belly button, completes the ensemble. This is Pablo Sanchez, the most legendary, mythical video game character that never was.
And he’s back, with all his friends. Backyard Baseball, the iconic point-and-click video game from the early 2000s, is set to be refurbished and released by a company named Playground Productions “in the coming months.” Specific details remain scarce; no gameplay footage has been released.
But there exists , quotes from Playground Production bigwigs and even an online shop full of Backyard Baseball brick-a-brack. 🚨 IT’S HAPPENING 🚨 — Céspedes Family BBQ (@CespedesBBQ) There’s also a “Backyard Sports Official” , a statement that would have made zero sense in 1997, when the original Backyard Baseball title was released by Humongous Entertainment. That game, which featured 30 bespoke, highly detailed, playable neighborhood kids in a point-and-click setting, became a massive success.
Its successor, Backyard Baseball 2001, took things to the next level by including 31 MLB players as kids within the game. That title became something of a cu.