From 1999 to 2015, Backyard Sports was a popular, kid-friendly sports game franchise that featured colorful graphics, simple gameplay, and one of the most dominant athletes in video game history, Pablo Sanchez. Today, Playground Productions announced that Backyard Sports is coming back and it will be more than just a video game.

According to a press release, Backyard Sports will “return in multiple areas, including video games, merchandise, film, television, and more.” The first of these projects will launch “in the coming months,” but nothing concrete has been announced — whether it’s a video game or what platforms it will appear on.

Along with the announcement, a short teaser trailer was released, featuring several kids in the typical Backyard Sports art style getting ready for a baseball game. We see a treehouse with league and tournament standings, the playground itself, and then as the pitcher steps onto the mound, Pablo Sanchez steps up to bat.

Playground Productions was founded in 2022 by Lindsay Barrett, a former second-grade teacher with “over a decade of experience in the Chicago public school system.” The company’s website states that “by leveraging the best technology, talent and character IP, Playground creates content that celebrates the spirit of play, meets kids where they are developmentally, and enables kids to be kids.”

Backyard Sports debuted on PC as Backyard Baseball in October 1997, followed by Backyard Soccer and Backyard Football in September 1998 and October 1999, respectively. The most recent Backyard Sports games prior to this announcement were for mobile, as both Backyard Sports: Baseball 2015 and Backyard Sports: Basketball 2015 launched simultaneously in February 2015. A Backyard Sports movie was also announced in 2016, but the project never moved forward.