Nostalgia doesn’t get sweeter than Backyard Baseball ’97. This pitch-perfect mobile version of the sports classic (it was once offered as a CD-ROM prize in cereal boxes!) lets you assemble a squad of little sluggers with big personalities. Throw physics-defying pitches that stop just shy of the plate, or use the power of an aluminum bat to swat a home run into the neighbour’s swimming pool. Just remember to pick Pablo Sanchez first!

What we love: The Saturday-morning-cartoon vibes. Even if you’ve never dabbled in the Backyard Sports series, watching players’ hilarious animations—and hearing them chant “We want a batter, not a broken ladder!”—is almost as fun as stealing home on a flubbed catch.

Quick tip: Each field has its own quirks. Base runners and fielders move more slowly at Sandy Flats. Playing at Cement Gardens? Hitting the ball into the parking dumpster counts as an automatic homer!

Meet the creator: Playground Productions CEO Lindsay Barnett taught second grade in Chicago for nearly a decade. Her class inspired the return of this classic, which the developers had to reverse-engineer from a CD-ROM because the original source code wasn’t available.