Board To Death

You know, it really surprises me the sheer amount of horror based board games there are. I mean, on this blog alone we've covered Seance , Slime Monster , Beware The Spider , Mystery Mansion , Ghost Castle , Haunted Mansion , Haunted House , and perhaps more horrifying of all, The Game of Life . For such a flooded market, the fact that horror is a genre that continually pops up in board games is quite impressive, but then again, humans are stupid simple creatures who enjoy being spooked. So then, let's add yet another to the list, shall we! This week, we're focusing on 1986's "Horror House". Also funny how many of these just happen to take place in a particular domicile of some sort, be it a mansion, a castle or a house. With no runtime, no designer credit and the only publisher being listed as Bandai of all people, Horror House might just be the singularly most obscure game I've covered, and that's saying something, considering I thought we'd cove...

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls of all ages and ethnicity, please welcome to the stage for one night only the great, the grand, the glorious...STEVE CANYON, as he attempts to pilot a jet through a larger burning jet while also making love to two women simultaneously! And, as if that wouldn't be enough of a feat to accomplish, Steve Canyon will be doing all of this...on a board game! Honestly, Steve Canyon might be one of the weirdest we've covered, just because it's got such a strange history (not to mention a Saturday Morning Cartoon title). For starters, the game is actually based on a "popular" comic strip titled, you guessed it, Steve Canyon. Actually, Steve Canyon isn't just a run of the mill filler comic strip either, it was made by the same man, myth, legend who created the classic "Terry & The Pirates", Milton Caniff and ran for over 40 years. But still, even as an enormous fan of comic strips and comic strip archival, what an odd or...

  You know, back in my day, our folks used to just beat us with a stick if we were misbehavin'. Now they're puttin' kids hands into giant mousetraps! Oh how the times have changed. Released in 1968, "Swack!" - which sounds more like a junk food with a radical name in the 90s than a board game - was released by Ideal, and...well...that's kind of all we know. In fact, according to Board Game Geek, there's no credit for a designer, no age range indicated, and the game only runs 10 minutes, probably because that's how long it takes for a childs fingerbones to break into pieces. On a humorous note (heh, bone puns), one of the mechanisms listed for the game on BGG is "Hand Management", which might be one of the single funniest word pairings I've ever read. The description of the game is as follows: Swack is Ideal's wacky, new game that's loaded with action. What happens when you take the cheese off the giant trap...ju...

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...

Gunfight at O.K. Corral is a board game in which a pair of dueling children pit their monstrous sized personal Cowboys against one another in a fight to the death. Okay, not really, but that would be so much better than what it actually is, wouldn't it? Kaiju Cowboys? Maybe it's just me who find that amusing. Either way, Gunfight is similar to the previous game featured here, "Crossfire", in that it almost boils down to essentially the same overall concept of just shooting things at whoever is on the other side of the board. Published by Ideal in 1973, I can find no information on either the designer or the artist, which kind of leaves us in a tough spot, because now I don't have anyones career to pick through for amusement, so let's talk about the game itself, shall we? Frankly, I think if you're having a gunfight, then not everything is okay at this corral. The description of this game is as follows: This is a children's dexterity game where players ...

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...