They’re making an animated special about the Backyard Sports games, and McLovin is just one familiar face involved

Did you know they were making a cartoon based around the Backyard Sports games? Me neither! But now I do, and after seeing the cast, I’m pretty excited.

Backyard Sports: The Animated Special is coming to YouTube and features some notable celebrity voices, including Christopher Mintz-Plasse AKA McLovin from Superbad as Dmitri Petrovich, Tiffany Haddish as Kiesha Phillips, and Utkarsh Ambudkar as Achmed Khan.

The 2000s-era PC sports game series featuring a fun cast of kids (and kid version of professional athletes once some licensing got involved) was brought back to life in the past few years. Several classic titles are found on Steam in their original form (like my personal favorite Backyard Baseball ’01), and this animated special is a part of its revival.

Other cast members include Adam Pally (Wade Whipple from the Sonic the Hedgehog movies) as Pete Wheeler, Donald Faison (of Scrubs fame) as Dante Wheeler, Deborah Baker Jr. as Kimmy Eckman, Ego Nwodim as Stephanie Morgan, and Arturo Castro as the GOAT Pablo Sanchez. The cast is pretty impressive for what seems to be a rather small operation, and I hope it does well and continues to provide hype for the franchise.

I’m very down to check this out, especially since it’ll be available on YouTube for free. I hope that this is a jumping-off point for some new Backyard Sports games as part of the franchise’s renaissance, and I also hope that the pro leagues like the MLB, NFL, NHL, and NBA get their players involved again so today’s kids can enjoy the games as I did.

The simplicity of the Backyard Sports games made it special and accessible to kids, with the games featuring a basic point-and-click gameplay style. I do wonder what a new game in the franchise would look like, and I’m hoping we get some more news soon.