Board To Death

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 best board games I can remember playing as a child is Pay Day.   I have a sneaking suspicion, however, that a lot of board games were simply economic learning tools disguised as games to teach children how to properly manage money. This theory can be backed up somewhat by the sheer number of board games involved with handling money. Between Pay Day, Monopoly, The Game Of Life (that one I think is just a dead giveaway considering the title), and a lot of other more obscure games like Big Money, Easy Money, Allowance, Shopping Spree and a game literally just called Budget, because why try and hide something that obvious I suppose, it's pretty cut and dry, to me at least, that that's what some of these were aiming for. And while education and entertainment have long since been intertwined - Schoolhouse Rock, anyone? - this doesn't really come as a shock, but I will admit...playing these board games didn't teach me a goddamned thing about money management. I ...