Retro Board Games

Mrs. MacGyver

Since the retro games thread seems to deal with computer games only, i thought i'd start one on board games. The most memorable for me was the smurf board game, myself and femmy had one each and it was class indeed. I also played 'discover Ireland' to abosolute death. also i remember we had the Stephen Roche Tour De France Game, it was terrible - i think we got it with super valu tokens or something.

byte

Retro games that stick out in my mind are Operation!, Buckaroo and Kerplunk.

Of course, the likes of Ludo, Snakes & Ladders etc were played often also!

Ruu_Old

Mastermind ftw.

Mrs. MacGyver

That reminds me of proverbia...another dodgy board game. There were different levels of toughness and you guessed it right....you had to finish off proverbs!!!

the Shades

Game of Life and Hotel were favourites, and of course Hungry Hippos.

The Bollox

Discover Ireland, the name righs a bell, I am sure I played it, positive, but can't remember what you did.

games for me were Jurassic Park, Star Wars (the one with the video), monopoly and the Game Of Life

Stephen P

Anyone remember Go For Broke? There was a little roulette wheel on it.

Mrs. MacGyver

Marts wrote:

Discover Ireland, the name righs a bell, I am sure I played it, positive, but can't remember what you did.

games for me were Jurassic Park, Star Wars (the one with the video), monopoly and the Game Of Life

You had cards in your hand with different destinations you had to travel to on the board. You had road blocks you could use to block your opponents journey and win...its been years since ive played it now so the theorys a bit rusty!

Mr. Presentable

I had, and still have, Nuclear War, complete with spinner. Originating in the 1960's, mine's from 1984.

monkeyfudge

Ghost Castle was great. It had a big tower in the middle of the board and you'd drop a skull down a hole in the top and it would pop out in one of four places and set off a trap.

I used to have a great game based on the sinking of the Titanic, the whole ship part of the board would spin around a little bit into the water each turn and you had to run around the ship to rescue as many people as you could and retrieve supplys as the next part of the game involved finding a desert island to survive on.

Ruu_Old

nipplenuts wrote:

I had, and still have, Nuclear War, complete with spinner. Originating in the 1960's, mine's from 1984.

*uses final strike on nipplenuts* Great game.

monkeyfudge

I had a nuclear game too.. but I don't remember a spinner.

I think it was simply called Apocolypse and you could stock pile small plastic missiles, and you could stack them to make more powerful bombs.. but using them was usually a last resort as you'd have to wait for city's radiation levels to drop before you could attempt to take it over.

Ruu_Old

I think the spinner had "double the yield" and "dud missile" on it and some other things I can't remember.

monkeyfudge

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/ is an excellent website. It's like IMDb but for board games... eh... it seems to be broken at the moment though...

iFight

Ahh, discover ireland, good times

Dingbats too, and Mastermind. But the king of board games has to be Monopoly

monkeyfudge

Ah yes... Ding Bats... that one started a long tradition of egg timers in board games.

fade2black

Opened the thread with the intention of adding ghost castle...was a great game.

Atmosfear was another

monkeyfudge

I got the DVD edition of Atmosfear about a year or so ago... it works a lot better than the old video one as the DVD works out different each time, and the characters selected also changes things.

They have a new one with a mummy as the dungeon master out now.. I saw it in the new Argos catalogue.

I used to have a Star Trek game like Atmosfear as well, it had a Klingon who had taken over the bridge of the Enterprise shouting at you.

fade2black

THRILL ME!!

Showtime Bigtime Party Time...And then some...

It really was a strange one. Clever though.

iFight

the Shades wrote:

Game of Life and Hotel were favourites, and of course Hungry Hippos.

Hotel was a great game, very addictive, played it so many times Havent heard of Game of Life

Mrs. MacGyver

iFight wrote:

Hotel was a great game, very addictive, played it so many times Havent heard of Game of Life

Cant believe you've never heard of the 'game of life' it was so class, you got to get a job, family etc. and try to stay solvent. Used to play it all the time with the neighbours on the estate when was young.

Earthhorse

monkeyfudge wrote:

I used to have a Star Trek game like Atmosfear as well, it had a Klingon who had taken over the bridge of the Enterprise shouting at you.

Ah ha, I think I played that with my friends once. Didn't Riker introduce it too? We got through around three turns on the board before the tape ended because none of us knew what we were doing. Luckily the Enterprise encountered an anomaly in the space time continuum so we could rewind the tape and try again.

Ghost Castle was a great board but a lousy game. When I got it I was too old to really enjoy it.

I used to spend my summer holidays in my cousins playing board games. We used to play marathon games of Monopoly and Trivial Pursuit spanned over three days because we weren't playing them right and hadn't a clue of most of the answers in Trivial Pursuit but it was always hilarious.

Other favourites include Go for Broke, Clue, Heroquest and Mysteries of Old Peking.

monkeyfudge wrote:

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/ is an excellent website. It's like IMDb but for board games... eh... it seems to be broken at the moment though...

Funny thing, I sent Aldie (admin on boardgamegeek) a request on Monday to change my username to Earthhorse because I'd registered as something else. I don't think he's going to do it but obviously the mere thought of having Earthhorse on their forums has brought the site to a halt.

When it comes back up it should be easy enough find the name of that Titanic game you mentioned or indeed any other game people are struggling the remember the name of.

Kolodny

byte wrote:

Retro games that stick out in my mind are Operation!, Buckaroo and Kerplunk.

I loved it but Operation scared the bejesus out of me as a child - I did not have a steady hand (still don't!)

Loved Mouse Trap too - anything with an element of suspense.

monkeyfudge

Earthhorse wrote:

Other favourites include Go for Broke, Clue, Heroquest and Mysteries of Old Peking.

Ah yes. The Mysteries of Old Peking was good fun, I'd forgotten about that one... some of the names in it were horribly racist if I recall.

I used to have two great ones called Sorceror's Cave and Mystic Wood. They were esentially big decks of A5 sized cards and you'd place them face down randomly on the floor and turn them over as you moved from one card to another so that the board was completely different each time and you never knew were the exit was.

Dudess

iFight wrote:

Havent heard of Game of Life

What??? *sings* "Be a winner in the ga-aame of life."

Guess Who and Connect 4 ftw btw!

Mr. Presentable

Ruu wrote:

I think the spinner had "double the yield" and "dud missile" on it and some other things I can't remember.

Dirty bomb - double the yield

Madge

Dudess wrote:

Guess Who and Connect 4 ftw btw!

They were my choices too! They're not too retro though, as they're still going strong!

Earthhorse

BoardGameGeek is back up!

Was that Titanic game actually The Sinking of The Titanic?

What was that game where you had to hang magnetic bats upside down from an archway? It was more like a toy than a board in some ways, kinda like Buckaroo. I've tried searching for "bats" and stuff over on bgg but to no avail.

monkeyfudge wrote:

Ah yes. The Mysteries of Old Peking was good fun, I'd forgotten about that one... some of the names in it were horribly racist if I recall.

Boardgaming wouldn't be the same if you couldn't put extreme right wing messages regarding immigration in them. I suppose they were pretty racist names in hindsight but it was all pretty harmless, like Gollywogs and stuff like that.

One sleuth game I acquired recently was 221b Baker Street. It's good fun but the cases are hard as nails to solve. You basically go around the board collecting clues from locations but they're kinda like cryptic crossword clues and you have to fit everything together. It helps if you like the Sherlock Holmes stories.

If anyone's thinking of getting back into boardgaming then I can't recommend The Settlers of Catan or Ticket to Ride enough. They're fun, easy to play and don't suffer from the same kind of problems that Monopoly and the likes do i.e. big fat arguments. They're designed for adults too but can be enjoyed by kids. It's a good way to socialise when you're broke or don't wanna go out.

Jambo

Ah ,
Go for broke was fantastic , and the game of life ... sure there still lurking around with ALL of my childhood toys of the time tucked up safley in my folks attic !!!

monkeyfudge

Earthhorse wrote:

BoardGameGeek is back up!

Was that Titanic game actually The Sinking of The Titanic?

That's the one... but it was called Abandon Ship for me.

Good thing the site is back up... just found another one that I was trying to remember... Thunder Road It was like Mad Max.

jaggeh

http://www.boardgamegeek.com/

nuff said