Skip to main content

Trouble

Trouble is one of the oldest board game memories that I have.

I don't have a lot of good memories growing up, but, before my mother remarried, we did spend a lot of time together in relatively good ways and one of those ways was playing Trouble. I think we went to Toys R Us and decided which board game to pick out, and I think we settled on Trouble because we often felt like we were so close to being in trouble ourselves all the time. It really just seemed very appropriate at the time.

Launching in 1965 and originally made by Kohner Brothers for Irwin Toys (but later, like everything else, falling under Milton Bradley's enormous amazing technicolor umbrella), Trouble is - much like Candy Land - an extremely simple game. You simply need to move the pieces around the board while rolling your dice in the pop-o-matic, a concept that honestly I'm surprised I've only ever seen in Trouble, as it's extremely easy to lose dice and cheat with dice. With the pop-o-matic device, it keeps the die in the game board, makes it so it can't be toyed with, and on the whole makes things fair for everyone. Now perhaps it's not been used in anything else because it's copyrighted, I don't know, but I think it's one of the single most brilliant design choices in the history of board games, myself.

The board design, and overall design I suppose, is also fairly decent. It's a very simple board, but its bursting with colors corresponding to each of the 4 player colors, and the little peg/hole design choice is really cool. Again, making it easy to not have your pieces easily misplaced. Trouble, more than anything, seemed very interest in simplistic yet logistically sound game design. I can approve of that. My favorite fun fact about Trouble, however, is that in the UK it's known as "Frustration", which really is hilarious and oddly appropriate because, honestly, isn't trouble just extremely frustrating? I'd say so. It also neatly ties into the UK's inability to sound rude.

There's actually not a whole lot of interesting history to talk about in regards to the game itself, quite frankly. So  with that in mind, I'll just say that Trouble is definitely a classic and understandably so, because, much like Candy Land, it's simple design and play style is so simple that even a 4 year old could be involved, making it an all ages game and thus perfect for families to play together. And while it's not a super interesting board, visually, unlike Candy Land or (especially Pay Day), it's still aesthetically visually pleasing and easy to look at and comprehend.

So, if you're ever in the mood to play a game, might I suggest Trouble, a game that, with as easy as it is to understand, you should have no trouble getting the hang of.

...sorry. That was terrible.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Electronic Dream Phone

Electronic Dream Phone, I'm sad to report, is not actually a dating teleservice for Freddy Kreuger, but instead another game catered primarily to teenage girls, who's only interests, according to marketing "experts" are malls and telephones. The game, released in 1991, is yet another that straddles the line between convoluted toy and proper board game, because while, yes, it does contain a board, the board isn't exactly your main focus here. Designed by Michael Gray (who, coincidentally enough, also designed Electronic Mall Madness) and published most famously by Hasbro, Dream Phone actually comes with a handful of alternate names, most of them foreign, and some funny enough to include right here. These include Boyfriend Phone, Téléphone Secret, and Droomtelefoon, which is just fun to say. The runtime for this game is apparently 20 minutes, which seems about right, considering the basis behind the game, as it were, is described by Board Game Geek as such: ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Electronic Enchanted Palace

  You know, I'm starting to realize that there was a trend of making girly games with the word "electronic" in front of their titles for a while. "Electronic Dream Phone" , "Electronic Mall Madness" , and now "Electronic Enchanted Palace". Sadly, this installment in the electronic girly interest board game isn't by Michael Gray. And, like the other two, or at least like Dream Phone moreso than Mall Madness, it barely registers as a board game because, well, it really straddles that fine line between board game and convoluted toy. So how's this game work? Well, according to our good friends over at Board Game Geek (I don't know if we're actually good friends, we've never really hung out, but I like to think we'd get along well), they state the throughline of the game is as follows: "Once upon a time in a land far away, an Evil Witch captured a magical palace and locked its Good Queen in the tower! Can you and your...
Post a Comment
Read more

Chutes & Ladders

Chutes & Ladders, Snakes & Ladders, Eels & Escalators, whatever you wanna call it, is one of those few board games that felt old when I was a kid. While most board games are relatively ancient, they at least never felt that way, or at least were modernized often enough, given a slightly fresher coat of paint, to appeal to younger audiences. But Chutes & Ladders never did, or if it did it certainly didn't work because nobody I know has ever played this game. It's almost as fake as Jumanji in its existence. One we've only heard whispered about but never witnessed ourselves. And yet, it is a real board game (also like Jumanji, amazingly; thanks marketing!) that you can go buy right now at your local superstore, on the shelf next to - frankly - more deserving games, like literally any of the ones I've talked about on here thusfar. Turns out my intuition about Chutes & Ladders being ancient was not actually all that far off. Chutes & Ladders (whose re...
Post a Comment
Read more