Game Boy Advance Game Recommendations | mariteaux

[#] Backyard Football (Infogrames, Game Boy Advance, 2002)

Humongous (in spirit) entertainment.

You wanna talk childhood classic? Another home run (wrong game) from none other than the once-bulletproof Freddi Fish/Pajama Sam/Spy Fox/Putt Putt developer Humongous goddamn Entertainment, it's Backyard Football. Uh, for the Game Boy Advance. I spent a hell of a lot of time playing this at 10, and with my recent newfound appreciation for American football, I was curious to revisit it. If you think of it like an updated, sillier take on Tecmo Bowl, you're not far off. You might be missing all the cute animation and voice acting, but this port gets a surprising amount of flavor in a pretty small dish, and it doesn't play half bad either.

Backyard Football presents you with a set of 40 kids, fictional ones of all wonky shapes, sizes, and skillsets, girls and boys, and a few big-headed real life NFL players. Pick some players and get a game going, because aside from five players on a side and no penalties or injuries, you'll be playing full fat football with a "coin toss", kickoff, conversions, quarters (each a minute long, though the clock doesn't run between plays), turnovers, all of it. Playbooks feature silly fictional plays like "Marshmallow" and "Power Zip", and a la NFL Street, you even get cheat plays where kids teleport or are guaranteed to steal the ball. (These may or may not work for you—I've never gotten that wide receiver teleport pass to work.)

Obviously the text box color commentator dialogue and limited spritework can't hold a candle to the PC original, but the charm is still evident. The kids animate smoothly on the field (albeit they run rather slowly), and their body types are accurately represented in their sprites, even the wheelchair wonder Kenny Kawaguchi. The saveable season mode and customizable lineups and playbooks means there's actually an impressive amount to dig your cleats into here, even if it's a little on the easy side—except for field goals. This might be the only football game in existence where it's easier to go for two than go for a field goal. Turns out kids love jumping all over you if you take too long.