While of similar breeding to Backyard Baseball 2007, Backyard Basketball 2007 ups the ante a little by adding many more licensed pros -- their kiddified likenesses, that is -- from the NBA.

Gameplay is your basic, dumbed-down "street" b-ball, which equates to "backyard" b-ball with cute and cuddly fatheaded graphical smears meant to represent players. Actual gameplay is a little more robust, constant back & forth, 3-on-3 that it is (as opposed to the world's slowest favorite game, baseball) but controlling your little dudes is still a clunky, popped-a-couple-too-many-quaaludes affair that's hard to watch and annoying to play. Overall it's better than Backyard Baseball 2007, but that isn't saying much.

Funny, but there are slim pickins' for kid-friendly sports games out there, and the Atari's Backyard sports games pretty much dominate the niche by acclamation. Too bad they don't bother to make them good.