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, there's just not enough firefighter appreciation out there. Not to sounded like a typical, jaded milennial, but why do sleazy cops get all the attention - all the TV dramas, the film franchises, the childs propoganda disguised as cute dogs - when firefighters, people who are actually risking their lives and saving people instead of killing them because of their skin color, not being recognized at all? A damn shame. Thankfully, someone at Milton Bradley was apparently asking the same question all the way back in 1973! "The Emergency!", also know by its French title " Le Jeu Emergency!" (because everything is funnier in French) is a board game for up to 4 people that pits players against each other in a race to be the fastest to complete emergency calls. Now, and I can't believe I have to say this but I guess I feel it needs to be stated, I get that competition is apparently what makes good business, but maybe, ya know, if an orphanage for blind chil...

  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: ...

What if I were to tell you that Conspiracy doesn't exist? That, in fact, Milton Bradley has denied it ever existing, and that those who have looked into the game, trying to determine its legitimacy, have suddenly and mysteriously gone missing. Would you believe me? Of course not, because that's ridiculous. But that's what conspiracies are, absolutely ridiculous things that nobody should believe. Then again, there was a period of time where conspiracies were much more fun. When they were more along the lines of "I think there's a giant sea monster living in a lake and the government is hiding its existence because they're afraid of mass public reaction" and less along the lines of "the government is inserting chips into our children to brainwash them into the queer agenda." One is plausible, one is ridiculous. And, in case you for some reason had to ask, the plausible one is the sea monster. I figured that went without clarification, but in thes...

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...

Before its name was adapted for a terrible right wing show featuring smarmy holier than thou fools who actually probably knew less about politics than an actual human infant, Crossfire was a radical board game. Well, it was a game on a board, anyway. Crossfire is one of those that really straddles the line between "board game" and "toy", kind of like Hungry Hungry Hippos. Still, it's absolutely awesome, and if you're of my age (I'm 33 for those wondering) then you likely remember the completely over the top commercial that went with it. Boy do I miss the days when they tried to sell kids games and toys using hard rock anthems. Good times, good times. To be honest, however, for the sake of transparency, I'm going to admit that I had completely forgotten about Crossfire until doing some research for what games to feature on the blog this month and this one came up, immediately unlocking long lost memories of Saturday Morning Cartoons interrupted interm...

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...

Back again to teach us the importance of stripping the world of its natural resources and creating an unsustainable business model are the minds behind Monopoly, with their new game, "Hotels". And by new, I mean it's from 1974, but I've always been of the opinion that if it's something you've never seen, then it's new to you, so. Hotels is a pretty basic and straightforward concept, overall. You construct an empire of hotels to bankrupt your opponents so you can continue your stranglehold on the market with no interference from anyone else. It's for 2-4 players, ages eight and up, and a game can run for 90 minutes. A brief description from Board Game Geeks reads as thus: Players try to buy and build the best hotels in this game, earning the most money or bankrupting their opponents. A successful hotel consists of three components: the land on which it's built, the hotel buildings, and the entrances by which guests arrive in the hotels. All three...

Why is it such a shared experience we have as children that we think sharks are everywhere? When I was a little girl, I just assumed sharks were in pools, lakes, the bathtub. I was absolutely terrified of water. Was it because we all saw "Jaws" at too young an age and it made an everlasting impression on us? Whatever the case may be, it seems that kids and sharks go hand in fin, and it makes sense why a lot of kids toys are (or at least were when I was a child) shark based. But never before have I seen a shark based board game, so leave it to Milton Bradley to craft yet another inexplicable combination that shouldn't work but somehow does. Shark Attack is a board game released by Milton Bradley in 1988, designed by Eddie Goldfarb and art by Chuck Slack, two men who sound more like they're ordinary good boys who fell in with the mob through a series of comical misadventures rather than board game designers. The description of the board game is as follows: ...