A Second-Grade Teacher Revived a Beloved Video Game
1–10 of 41 posts
Re: A Second-Grade Teacher Revived a Beloved Video Game
#2Deck: Backyard Baseball, a favorite game for 1990s kids, had been off the market for years. But Lindsay Barnett was determined.
Non-paywall: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/13/style/backyard-baseball-v...
Re: A Second-Grade Teacher Revived a Beloved Video Game
#3Deck: Backyard Baseball, a favorite game for 1990s kids, had been off the market for years. But Lindsay Barnett was determined. Non-paywall: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/13/style/backyard-baseball-v...
Still has a paywall for me.
Re: A Second-Grade Teacher Revived a Beloved Video Game
#4I was just going to post this, and searched first and landed here. Not much to say beyond that reading this piece made me so happy, and brought back tons of nostalgia for days I'd long forgotten.
Re: A Second-Grade Teacher Revived a Beloved Video Game
#5Deck: Backyard Baseball, a favorite game for 1990s kids, had been off the market for years. But Lindsay Barnett was determined. Non-paywall: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/13/style/backyard-baseball-v...
Still has a paywall for me.
Gift link, if you'd like to use it: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/13/style/backyard-baseball-v...
Re: A Second-Grade Teacher Revived a Beloved Video Game
#6Never played the backyard games. For me, the ultimate nostalgia trip along these lines is the excellent Little League Baseball for NES.
Re: A Second-Grade Teacher Revived a Beloved Video Game
#7Re: A Second-Grade Teacher Revived a Beloved Video Game
#8I know from people who actually worked on this that the process of actually getting the game running and following modern platform conventions was somewhat insane and tortuous, but interesting. Too technical for the Times to go into though I guess.
But yeah, essentially the whole port is done with binary patches to the original executable.
Re: A Second-Grade Teacher Revived a Beloved Video Game
#9I know from people who actually worked on this that the process of actually getting the game running and following modern platform conventions was somewhat insane and tortuous, but interesting. Too technical for the Times to go into though I guess. But yeah, essentially the whole port is done with binary patches to the original executable.
Say more, seems like a simple game? Was it written weird or something?
I dont know much about legacy ports of games like this, would be curious to learn more.
Re: A Second-Grade Teacher Revived a Beloved Video Game
#10TLDR; a Chicago-area schoolteacher was able to find the rights to the old Backyard Baseball PC game from the 1990s, and she commissioned a software game development company and a still-live fan base, to recreate the source code (because the original source was lost).
She founded a company called Playground Productions. Thanks to her efforts, nostalgic Millennials and their kids can purchase and enjoy this old game.
A nice, feel-good story. But I have two questions:
1. The story doesn't mention how this schoolteacher got enough "private investors" so she could quit her job and pursue this. Sounds like an important detail.
2. Would have liked to know more about the source code. What happened to the original code (it wasn't in escrow somewhere?) and how did they recreate it? It says some fans had old CD-ROMs with the game on it, and the game dev company in Pittsburgh worked with them to rebuild the game.