On a recent episode of the New Heights podcast, the NFL star and media personality Jason Kelce let slip some news that should excite gamers who grew up playing Humungous Entertainment's Backyard Sports series.
Speaking to his brother and co-host Travis, he revealed that he has secretly been looking into who owns the rights to Backyard Football and Backyard Baseball series of games, in the hopes of potentially bringing them back from the dead (thanks IGN/Kotaku!).
The topic came up at roughly 35 minutes into their 1-and-a-half hour-long podcast, released on January 31st, during a discussion about Travis's recent performance in the playoffs for the Kansas City Chiefs.
Travis asked his brother Jason whether he remembered the Backyard Football series, leading Jason to reveal that he had recently been looking into acquiring the rights to the game to give it a reboot:
“I don’t even know if I want to mention this. I’ve secretly been looking into seeing if anybody holds the rights to Backyard Football and Backyard Baseball because I want to buy it and get this thing going again. That was the best game ever. It was so electric. Can you imagine playing Backyard Football right now on your phone? You can do that whole thing on your phone. It wasn’t that complicated of a game."
As IGN and Kotaku both note, the developer Day 6 Sports Group (who made the last few entries in the series) is listed on the Justia trademarks website as being the most recent owner of the Backyard Sports trademarks, so they'd likely be who Jason would need to reach out to. However, the company's website is no longer active and it appears the studio closed its doors back in 2020.
The last two games in the series were Backyard Sports Baseball 2015 and Backyard Sports NBA Basketball 2015 -- both of which were released for iOS and Android.
What do you think? Is it about time the Backyard Football and Backyard Baseball games make a return? Let us know in the comments!