Humongous Entertainment was (and nominally remains) a video game developer formed in the 90s to make kids’ games. They made their bread and butter from two types of products: adventure/puzzle point-and-clicks like Putt-Putt and Spy Fox, and, of course, the Backyard Sports series, which I have paid tribute to previously and which the guys over at Cespedes Family Barbecue have done several brilliant posts on (like this one).

However, as sometimes happens, Humongous fell on hard times, passed between various corporations, and has most recently had it’s assets sold when Atari went under a year or two ago.

Which leads us to the current situation. Most of Humongous’ point-and-click classics, like Putt-Putt, went to a studio called Night Drive, and they have restored them and are putting them up for sale on Steam, the famous digital distribution platform that has allowed for countless of current best-sellers and forgotten classics to be put into the hands of gamers digitally. Thanks to the fact they don’t have to worry about shipping or actually creating a physical copy of the game, prices are often lower (especially for older games, although even newer games often have sales now and then).

Problem: When Atari went under, one of the things that Night Drive did not get was the Backyard series. Instead, the “Evergreen Group” did. So, the Backyard games have NOT gone to Steam.

Yet. You see, to the best of my knowledge, the Evergreen Group hasn’t done a thing with the Backyard sports stuff they have in their possession (there was a brief thing on their Twitter about “stay tune”, but…). Let’s change that with a good old fashioned campaign:

• Tell TEG’s Twitter feed and Facebook Page that we want Backyard Baseball (and the other Backyard Sports games) on Steam.
• Contact them through their website. (Note that the contact page may not be working, as it gave me an error message when I tried it. Still may be worth a try.)
• Send actual snail-mail to the Evergreen Group’s headquarters at 1600 Rosecrans Avenue, Manhattan Beach, CA, 90266 (note that I am not sure if this address is current, as I found it on a old SEC info thing that popped up on Google).

So, there you go. Be courteous, be polite, and remember, the Secret Weapon forever.

UPDATE: Jim Wagner of the Evergreen Group has confirmed that they will relaunch the franchise, which is great. However, it really doesn’t change the goal of this Campaign to get Backyard Baseball and the other Backyard Sports games on Steam.