Board To Death

  You know, until doing this blog, I wasn't aware of just how many electronic board games there actually were, but it seems they were once quite common. It's kind of a neat idea, adds something to what could otherwise be a dull experience, but I've also noticed a lot of these fall into that grey area of "is it really a board game or is it a toy with a board?". Ask Zandar seems to be one of those. But look at the box. It just oozes that same kind of otherwordly mystique that Jumanji does. Something magical, ethereal, something that, perhaps, we aren't meant to be engaging with but can't help ourselves either. The font, the painting, the overall aesthetic design. It's a thing of beauty. Released in 1992, with a once again uncredited designer (getting real sick of that being a regularly recurring thing) for up to 4 players with a runtime of 30 minutes, Board Game Geek describes the gameplay as such: On their turn, each player draws a quest...

  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...

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: ...

I can't imagine a funnier scenario than coming across this in a thrift store. I didn't. That didn't happen. I just can't imagine a funnier scenario for finding a board game than that. Released in 1981 by Milton Bradley and designed by Michael Gray (once again no artist is credited that I can find but really does 'multicolored squares' count as an art design?), Bargain Hunter is perhaps the local income family version of Electronic Mall Madness. Now you live on the other side of the railroad tracks after some bad investments, and you can no longer afford the finer products in life, forcing you to do all your shopping at a thrift store. Gray is actually a fairly accomplished game designer who, ironically enough, designed Electronic Mall Madness. When I say accomplished, for the record, I just mean that he's successful. Not that the game's he's designed are decent. In fact, a majority of them appear to be novelty titles based on pre-existing IP. "T...

Boy, growing up in the 80s/90s, as I did, if you asked where girls lived, you'd often get the response, "The mall!" because people just thought teenage girls lived and died at the mall. And while I did visit the mall a lot as an adolescent, I assure you it wasn't to take advantage of THESE GREAT LOW PRICED DEALS! It was more to either buy a book now and then, or escape my family, and often much more the second than the first. It wasn't about social interaction or spending money, it was about having the chance to actually get out of the house and away from the people who constantly wanted to hurt me. So to make a board game based on a mall, something that, these days, seems to sort of be in its death throes, is a pretty great concept that I'm all for. Even as much of a stereotype as "girls love the mall" might have become, let me tell you, as someone who was once a teenage girl, it's 100% true. See a stereotype is a stereotype often because they...