Backyard Sports Sandlot Sluggers for Wii Reviews by Gamers

This is very borning.

I'm probably dating myself here, but I remember playing Backyard Baseball many years ago when it was a CD-ROM game for Mac and Windows. It had memorable characters, each with an actual voice, commentators that were fun (and a little repetitive), and other unique features that gave the game (and a season of baseball) a life of its own. So I was happy to see that this game made it to the Wii. However, upon further examination, it is only a shell of what this game used to be. It's basically a baseball game with very little to do with kids playing baseball in the backyard. No individual voices for the characters, generic looking kids that might have the same names as the classic versions but lack the personality found in those older versions, and unrealistic locales (top of a building? Come on!). Sure, the power-ups are still there, and still crazy as ever, but not nearly as fun and unique as it used to be.

I'm disappointed at this effort. Certainly game technology has come far enough along that you can eclipse graphics and recorded dialog from the late 90s, right? Apparently not.