Board To Death

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: ...

Boy, if you're really into board games and really into feet, then do I have the game for you. You know, before we get into the details, I have to ask...for all those toys out there that release doll heads one can model and makeover, why hasn't the same been done for hands or feet? I mean, it's okay to release a plastic head with a wig on it that some little girl can play hairdresser with, but not okay to release a plastic hand or foot for the other little girl who wants to learn how to paint nails and trim cuticles? Doesn't seem fair. And I'm not even a foot person, feet disgust me, I'm just looking at this from a practical point of view. Stop ignoring the girls who don't wanna style hair! Anyway, release in 1988 by Coleco of all companies, Footenstein is an extremely basic concept. The object of the game is to simply remove all the bolts from the foot one by one using the "mad scientist wrench" that's been included. One wrong move, and the foo...

Once again I have to ask what it is with the horror themed board games. I'm a fan of board games, and I'm a fan of horror, but why are there so many of them? I guarantee they're 70% of this blog at this point! Although, this is a weird one because it's technically not even got a board. That's right, this is one of those rarities that falls into that iffy category of "is it or is it not a board game?" and on a technicality level, yeah, I have a hard time qualifying it as such. But, this is the blog for board games, and it comes in a board game box and so that's that. But yes, this is not technically a board game, it's actually a tile laying game, which, and I can't believe I even have to SAY this...tile laying is not scary in the slightest. According to Board Game Geek, the description is as follows: "Each player selects 10 "spooky" tiles of either witches, monsters, ghosts, or buzzards, plus one crossroad and one tombstone. The...

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...