‘Backyard Baseball ‘97’ Is Available on Switch and PlayStation 5, So You Can Dominate With the GOAT Pablo Sanchez Once More

Pablo Sanchez. A name that can send chills up the spine of any ’90s kid. If you were in control of him, you knew it was game over. But if he approached the plate as a member of another team? You knew it was time to break out the crazy pitches. The Backyard Sports series is one of the most iconic of all time, and it’s back and better than ever. For the first time, it’s also available on consoles. That’s right. We can take a trip down memory lane on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation consoles with Backyard Baseball ’97, and it’s just as good as you remember it being. This isn’t a case of rose-tinted glasses; this game is still gas.

Step up to the Plate Like You Did in 1997 With ‘Backyard Baseball ‘97’, or Share It With Your Kids

While I never owned a copy of Backyard Baseball, I remember borrowing it from my local library more times than I could count. Backyard Baseball and Backyard Football were fundamental building blocks of my gaming obsessions back in the day, and I’m so glad to see that these franchises are making a comeback. But most importantly, I’m so happy that kids of this era will finally understand what made Pablo Sanchez a name that we all remember. Unironically, he’s the most overpowered kid in any of these games, but his appearance in Backyard Baseball ’97 is where he cemented himself in the hall of fame.

You may think, especially now that you’re older, that these games may not hold up. I’m glad to say they’ve held up way better than I could have expected. Nostalgia bait is a dime a dozen these days, but Backyard Baseball ’97 is still an impressive and exciting sports game. Sure, hearing “We want a batter, not a broken ladder” on repeat may affect my psyche much more now as an adult than it did when I was a kid. But these games have made their way onto consoles in a much better form. They’re easy to pick up and play. And they give us old heads an opportunity to show our little ones exactly what they’ve been missing.

Plus, unlike sports games of the modern era, there are no microtransactions, no battle passes, nothing of the sort. Just pure, exciting Backyard Baseball action. Oh yeah, and Pablo Sanchez. Why no Xbox, you may be asking? According to the Steam page’s launch announcement: Sorry, no X-Box. Without the game’s original source code, we haven’t cracked that one.