The ‘Backyard Sports series’ features baseball as well as basketball, football, hockey, and soccer with memorable original kid characters supporting the pint-sized pros. In Backyard Sports: Sandlot Sluggers, kids like Joey MacAdoo, a sister duo, and others headline some great baseball play on eight different neighborhood ball fields. This well-established sports game series takes a time out from pro athletes for this neighborhood kid baseball set complete with a story mode, season, playoffs, and home run derby.
Players begin with a boy or girl character then can bat through the story mode or choose a 7 or 14 week season or playoff season — both include a simulate option so players do not have to play through every game and every team.
Important options include a 10-run mercy rule, difficulty settings (easy, medium, or hard), and inning length (1, 3, 5, or 9). The flexible lineup allows players to switch the batting order, but an individual player statistic view (shown on the top screen) would certainly help.
The detailed player movement options are lacking, but overall still solid for a handheld game. Players cannot where they hit the ball and chose among power swing, line drive, bunt left or right in a nice touchscreen quadrant at each at-bat. Each pitch works within the same four-option format as players choose among several options depending on the pitcher including screwball, curve, fast, slide, and change-up.
The special power-ups add momentum and humor to the gameplay. The booger ball, air ball, and mirage are the self-explanatory pitching wild cards while batting power-ups include the meteor ball, fire bat, icicle, ticking time ball, or whiffle ball. Two new commentators named Ron and Wally tag team for the play-by-play banter on and off the field. Even foul balls that accurately move back towards the touch screen give players that extra entertainment. A simulated glass crack would have been great too.
Players have a few character customization options, but not enough to replicate themselves. The limited graphics do not warrant such a close copy anyway while the interactive fields pick up the action very well. Some light-colored trailing visuals on the ball would help in some daylight situations (***1/2 out of four stars, rated E for comic mischief. Also available on Nintendo Wii, PC download, and Xbox 360).
