Board To Death

One of the board games I never understood the popularity of was The Game Of Life. Perhaps, if you grow up in a healthy, well functioning, non abusive family then the game takes on different connotations and becomes simply something you can do to pass the time. But for someone like me, who grew up in a unhealthy poorly functioning abusive family, the game becomes a swift kick to the crotch about how much better your board game life is to your actual life, and how depressing that can be. It was almost as if your leisure activity were laughing directly at you for not being capable of achieving the things everyone else seemed capable of achieving, like having a family or going to college or even getting a job. To be fair, I never played The Game Of Life all that much. I wanna say we owned a copy, but I'm not even sure that that's true. Or if we did, we simply didn't play it a whole lot. I think part of the problem is that, as a kid, the game seems too far away and uninteresting...

Ask anyone of my age - I'm 31 for context - and they'll tell you that Jumanji was one of their favorite movies growing up. It's considered a modern classic for a reason, even despite its very few degraded visual effects, the movie holds up as a relic of childhood nostalgia for anyone from the 90s. I, for one, know that I watched the hell out of it as a kid, and I know tons of people who would easily say the same. Even for someone like myself, the rare Robin Williams nonfan (don't get bent out of shape, I don't dislike the guy, I was just never gaga like everyone else) I can recognize how necessary his role to the films central success was, and why it wouldn't have worked without him. Despite playing a part of something so bizarre, he also gave this fantastical film a very grounded reality because he himself is simply so welcoming as a person. But of course, where would a movie be without its tie ins, and I dare to say that Jumanji had perhaps one of the greatest...

Mystery Date is a board game circa 1965 from the Milton Bradley company, conceived by none other than the man who's become this blogs apparent nemesis, Marvin Glass, and created by Henry Stan. A confusing contradiction, as "conceived" often means "created", so I'm not sure how to parse that exactly, but whatever. It's marketed to girls 6 to 14 years of age, and is overall a fairly popular board game in pop culture, often showing up as a trope or reference in things. Basically the object of the game is to acquire a desirable date from a group of men, all while avoiding "the dud". These men include the Formal Dance date, the Bowling Date, the Skiing Date and the Beach Date. I'm unsure what kind of climate the people in this game live in, because if you're able to go skiing, that means it's too cold to go to the beach, so unless they live in something akin to Springfield, their temperatures make no sense whatsoever. But why nitpick a g...

Sorry is actually another game I did play a lot as a kid. It's not something I remember super dearly or anything, I just have these very distinct memories of having played it as a child. There's not really much to it, visually, that makes it all that interesting, either. It's a very simple board design, the pieces look like deformed chess pawns and overall it's just rather meh in its look. Let's start off this blog post with a fun fact, which is Sorry actually originated from the UK, and it makes sense, doesn't it? Only the UK would have a game with an apologetic polite word for its title. I'm gonna be frank with you guys, there's not a whole lot to discuss here. It's a fairly straight forward game, it's not very interesting visually and it's not got a very in depth history to it. The colors of the board and pieces all work really well together, I'll give it that much. Red, Teal, Yellow and Blue all somehow work, and I think it's beca...