Screaming Eagles

When I was a little girl, my stepfather took me yearly to see the Blue Angels perform tricks at a local air show. I've never been a huge fan of planes, despite traveling them on them fairly consistently when I was younger, but even I enjoyed the antics of the Blue Angels, even if now in hindsight I recognize it as nothing more than patriotic propaganda designed to make kids more trustworthy of the US government through the guise of cool plane tricks. But I try not to get too political on any of my work, because my opinion on anything outside the thing I'm covering isn't important to the thing I'm covering, so. I just wanted to give some sort of context as to why I - a 31 year old queer woman - might think something like Screamin' Eagles is not only a cool looking board game but also a great band name.

Let's just state it right from the get go...the colors and artwork on this box are beyond exceptional. The font design is fantastic, and all in all this is a good example of a piece of boxwork I wouldn't mind simply hanging on my wall framed. That's something we run into in general though, and it doesn't necessarily guarantee a great interior design. After all, often times the most beautiful people can be the most insidious scummy assholes inside, as I'm sure you're all well aware especially if reality TV has taught us anything at all.

And sadly, that's sort of the case here. While this board is by no means without merit, it's definitely a step down artistically from what the box was, but really, when you think about what the game is, there weren't many ways to make a board that made sense otherwise so I have to give them some leeway here.

So sure, there's some cool artistry on display here, what with the idea of the board being the inside of a cockpit of the jet, but even the it still feels somewhat flat and uninspired, which is odd considering the kick ass concept they've got to draw from, right? Yes, the art is there, but it's almost like someone just pasted stickers of it on top of the board. Nothing has any dimension to it, nothing has any personality to it, and overall the whole thing just feels completely bland, especially the coloring. Now, while I understand the interior of a jet cockpit can't be yellow and pink, I certainly find it a sad change from the fantastical coloring the front of the box had when you compare it to the board which looks like it was colored by the same person who thought the spectrum of color began and ended with a tin cup and a pair of khaki shorts.

Still, unique, certainly. Cannot claim it isn't definitely different and something worth noting, even beyond its bland visuals. I guarantee there's never been a board quite like this before.

And, for all its shortcomings, I give Screamin' Eagles an A simply for the fact that it veered out to do something totally original for a change. So many board games hamper themselves by cuffing their creativity to boring old concepts, but I love that someone at Milton Bradley thought to themselves, "You know what'd be cool? Fighter jet board game" and he wasn't wrong. Even if the game supposedly only runs for about 20 minutes per play (which is a perfectly acceptable time I think for a board game, though I'm a bit surprised something this complex doesn't run hours like Risk does) we definitely have to hand it to designer Jim Keifer and artist Paul Alexander for their totally creative work done here to think outside of the box for a change, not to be cute or anything. Sad to say, this seems to only be the case for this title and not its remake, which they renamed to be Mission Command Air, which sounds less like a board game and more like a terrible mid 90s Tom Cruise movie.

Where as the Screamin' Eagles box at least had a hint of coolness to it, they've completely dropped the idea that this isn't just military propaganda and instead entirely embraced it, because god damn, look at this box, it makes me feel like an American just seeing it. I wanna join the army and drive a Toyota because of this box now. This is the most mother fuckin' American board game box I've ever laid eyes on.

The art is even just terrible, it just looks like clip-art you'd find for a school project and the font for the title of the game is even more ridiculous, looking like it should be attached to a terrible mobile game than a board game. Not only that, but the game itself looks way more confusing and ridiculous than Screamin' Eagles ever did. Sure, Screamin' Eagles had a weird setup that probably took a few games to get the hang of, but this thing? This monstrosity of a board? You look at this and tell me it's visually coherent.

I mean you've got cards with weird schematics on them, and sure you've got neat little planes on standees atop a board designer to look like (I'm assuming) a foreign country you've bombing for no good reason, because that's what Americans do, it's kind of our past time, but this is just so goddamned ugly. Especially when compared to the original, and sure, I said the original was kind of ugly too, but at least it had a neat concept behind it; the cockpit view, where as this is just a world overview of people you've preparing to nuke likely because they look different than you do.

Screamin' Eagles is much the same, sure, they didn't really change anything between the two, they just made it uglier. You've still got the little planes, the cards with the schematics, but it's all been dumbed down and made to look worse in the remade version. Hell, at least Screamin' Eagles had a color palette that they tried to use for everything within the game for the sake of consistency. Mission Command Air (starring Tom Cruise) has no visual consistency, no real overall theming and somehow despite being the more "modern" of the two comes out looking the worst. I think Screamin' Eagles might be a perfect example of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." Even with all its faults and flaws, most of which are minor really and don't take anything away from the artistry of it as a whole, Screamin' Eagles stands leagues above this pathetic white trash military suck off job they've tried to pass of as its successor. The first is from 1987 and the remake is from 2003 (and I hesitate to call it a remake, but I can't really think of a more appropriate word for when someone makes a lesser version of a pre-existing cool thing) and still, even with the visuals they only had back in the 80s Screamin' Eagles comes out on top.

For god sakes, apparently Mission Command Air takes 45 minutes to play through! Imagine being stuck in the cheap knock off longer than the cool original. What a horrible way to spend an afternoon. It's like seeing a terrible movie sequel that has none of the charms of the first film, and is somehow longer for some reason because they've bloated it with incoherent subplots and over the top yet somehow visually unstimulating action sequences.

And you wanna know the best part about Mission Command Air? According to BoardGameGeek.com (where I parse most of my information from), it's designer is Uncredited and its artist is N/A. Even the people who made this thing were so fucking embarrassed by it that they opted out of having credit for their work. Hilarious.

I haven't seen the Blue Angels in years, and I hate flying on planes. I don't really care for the military and quite frankly I have absolutely zero interest in seeing the new Top Gun film, and yet, I must admit...even I would spend a rainy afternoon with Screamin' Eagles, solely because it's different from everything else, and in a good way. It looks like an entertaining way to spend a few hours.

Which is more than I can say for any Tom Cruise film.