Board To Death

When I was a little girl, my stepbrother wanted to go slot car racing for his birthday one year. I wasn't a huge fan of it, but over the years I've managed to gain an appreciation for miniature models and hobbies like that, and perhaps that's where my enjoyment for things like this came from. Not that that was my only exposure to toy cars, mind you. I also had a small collection of Hot Wheels and Matchbox - which were the lesser cool console wars of the day, frankly - because, unlike other girls my age, I liked stuff like that and also my dad, on the rare occasions I saw him, gave me a lot of them. So when you match those points up with my adoration for board games, specifically the 3D modeled board games with set pieces, then what you have is something entirely unique, like Crash Canyon. Crash Canyon, published by our board game overlords Milton Bradley, was released in 1989, the very year I was born. Designed for 2 to 4 players, the description is as follows: "This o...

I've said it before and I'll say it again: dinosaurs make anything cooler, even board games. Lost Valley of the Dinosaurs is a board game published by Waddingtons (which sounds more like a Paddington Bear's loser cousin than a board game publisher) and designed by Julian and Tonie Courtland Smith with art by Julian Courtland Smith and Jerker Eriksson, and let me just say that - for the record - if I ever had a kid and I named them Jerker, I'd fully understand if they grew up to hate me. It's completely valid. Released in 1985 and boasting 2-4 players and a thirty to sixty minute run time, it's on par with other board games that feature in depth designs and fantastical adventures, such as Fireball Island. This is yet another board game that has an expansive set, complete with excellent dinosaur figures you must avoid and even a working volcano that spews lava onto the board. This thing is really a work of art, man, and the fact that it seems relatively forgotten ...

Town Dump might just be the single most obscure board game I've featured on this blog thus far, and that includes "Across The Board: A Horse Racing Game" , so that says something. Can I make an admission? I'm a sucker for dumpster diving. Growing up, my best friend's mom managed a series of apartment complexes, and because of that, he and I had the absolute run of the mill of the places, getting into unused apartments to film early short films and, of course, going dumpster diving. It was just a fantastically good time, and even in 2014 when I lived in Santa Cruz in a complex populated mostly by college students, I dumpster dove all the time, because the thing about college kids is they throw a lot of things away when they move home after college ends, and so you find a lot of excellent stuff for zero dollars. Once, my friend and I discovered a virtually new acoustic guitar in one of the dumpsters at his apartment complex, and you wouldn't believe some of the ...

Without having ever played Forbidden Bridge, I think I can still adequately claim that it's also fair to be called the poor mans Fireball Island. It so clearly wants to be in the same category, just looking at the visual and the overall concept, but it's so watered down, so very simple in comparison, that it's like Baby's First Fireball Island in comparison. This is likely the meanest thing you can say about it, however, so that's good. Much like Fireball Island, you play an adventurer seeking to liberate a jewel from an angry idol, and much like Fireball Island the whole thing inevitably takes place on a large 3d printed board game set in a jungle of some kind (where these sorts of things invariably take place). When the idol shakes, the bridge can break, and the player can topple down to the board below, or players can switch with other players so they don't fall off, or steal one anothers jewel if they land on the same space. It's fairly basic, it's f...

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...

One of the games I never owned but once I learned about I would've killed to have owned is Fireball Island. First published by Milton Bradley in 1986, it's hands down one of the single coolest looking board games ever made. It's got so many aspects to it, it comes with so many pieces and the overall game itself can be rather complex at times, but just look at this gorgeous thing. I believe this image is of the redesigned Kickstarted version from the past few years, but even then it's incredible. The level of detail and the amount of artistry that went into this is nothing short of astounding, especially when compared to other board games, and especially when compared to other board games near its original release date. Stuff simply didn't look like this back then. Now-a-days, board games can be very visually complex and interesting, but back in 1986, this sort of thing just wasn't really done. Board games mostly had all the art on the board itself, unless you we...