The ROM hackers are responsible for the return of Backyard Baseball.
The return of Backyard Baseball to modern computers may seem like a simple emulation process, but it was actually much more complex.
Backyard Baseball '97, in its new version for Steam, may seem like a simple re-release, but its return to the market has involved considerable work. This children's game, which launched the successful Backyard Sports franchise, is presented in a no-frills formula, maintaining the essence of its original release in 1997, except for some Steam features like achievements.
The collaboration between Playground Productions and Mega Cat Studios, developers of Wrestlequest, was crucial for reviving this classic. However, they faced a significant obstacle: they did not have the source code of the game. This required extensive effort from ROM hacking and modding experts, who had to reverse-engineer the game to make modern PCs "believe" they could run Backyard Baseball '97.
John Simon, a senior engineer, shared his passion for reverse engineering, starting his journey in developing tools for speedrunners and extending his attention to Backyard Sports, where he created the resources that revitalized the online game. This interest in game modification also attracted the attention of Mega Cat, whose members met in retro gaming communities.
When Playground Productions partnered with Mega Cat and hired Simon, a team of about ten developers set to work on the return of Backyard Baseball. Despite obtaining numerous discs and files related to the series, the challenge lay in the fact that there was no access to the original source code. Instead of compiling the game directly, the team had to decompile, interpret, and recompile scripts to get the game running again.
To carry out this task, Mega Cat resorted to a patching framework that manipulated the game at load time, allowing for necessary corrections and adjustments. This trial-and-error process was lengthy, given that Humongous used a game engine with peculiar features that were not compatible with modern standards.
Despite the high technical standards of the original game, Mega Cat's work was highly specialized even for additions like achievements. Simon explains that more than emulation, they were creating an environment where the game believed it was running on a 1996 PC with Windows 95.
The release of Backyard Baseball '97 is not the end of the road for Mega Cat, which plans to bring other Backyard Sports games to more platforms and turn the series into a multimedia franchise. However, in the short term, it is unlikely that the game will reach consoles due to the technical standards that must be met.
The collaboration between Playground Productions and Mega Cat will continue, as they are committed to releasing several titles in the series in the future. Although the source code has been lost for most titles, Simon hopes that some developer from Humongous will eventually come forward with the code and facilitate this much-anticipated recovery.
Backyard Baseball '97 is now available for PC on Steam.
