I was born in 1964. This means that when the first video games hit the mainstream, I was already in my teens. I got an Atari 2600 when I was 16 years old. It was still cool and I loved it to bits.
But my time of birth meant that many of the games I played as a kid were of the board/non-electronic variety because video games just weren’t there. Let’s have a look!
Note: I have linked to each game on BoardGameGeek when possible, with a few exceptions.
Lawn Darts. I still don’t know how these things were ever legal. We had a nice grassy boulevard in front of our house, which was the perfect place to throw giant metal darts into plastic hoops. No one ever got hurt, mostly because we were just smart enough to know standing on the receiving end was a very bad idea.
Monopoly. Yeah, it’s not really a great game in the popularized form we played (no movie/TV tie-ins back then, just the capitalist “bankrupt everyone else for fun!”) but sometimes you just want to crush others and accumulate piles of money. I am a product of my culture. We played with a lot of the common house rules–fines and payments going to Free Parking being the most prominent.
Careers. I really don’t remember much about this game, other than each career track had its own internal mini-path inside the main board and one career was Ecology because it was the 70s. I do remember playing it a fair bit. I like that the game box seems to make you choose: Fame? Fortune? Happiness? Be rich or be happy! (Ecology was the “be happy” career.)
The Game of Life. First, this game was absurd. It looked at Monopoly money and then added three zeroes to everything, because more is more. You could go to school or have a career, but not both (?!) You could have kids. Lots of kids. We often had second cars just full of pegs that represented all the kids. Life is not just accumulating vast wealth, but also making babbies like you were a bunny. But the coolest part of the game were the little 3D hills and buildings built into the game board. They didn’t serve anything but an aesthetic role, but I loved them. The spinner was very satisfying to spin, too.
Just look at it:
Trouble. I remember the TV commercial jingle to this day, cursed thing (“If you’ve got trouble, wait, don’t run/This kind of trouble is lots of fun”). The game was simple, but again, that “Pop-o-Matic” die roller (which meant you could never lose the die) was extremely satisfying. The game itself was fine.
Clue. A classic. One of the first puzzle games for me. I was drawn in by the miniature murder weapons and ornately laid-out rooms on the board, but loved solving the mystery.
Risk. A friend was really into this. I was never any good at it. I guess I’m not a warmonger. Or maybe I’m just bad at strategy. Whatever the reason, most games saw me adopt a defensive posture, then get squeezed and crushed early enough that I spent most of the game reading comic books. (This is the only game on the list I didn’t actually own.)
Tank Battle. I enjoyed this, not just because it came with neat little plastic models of tanks (when a tank was taken out, we would carefully disassemble it to show its defeat), but yeah, I’m a visual person, so it counted for a lot.
Mastermind. Another game of deduction. The presentation was simple, but effective. This was probably one of the first games where I wished there was an electronic version so I could play when a friend wasn’t around (they did, in fact, make electronic versions, but I never got them).
Mouse Trap. If there was ever a board game made for me, it was Mouse Trap. An entire board of Rube Goldberesque contraptions you put together over the course of the game, then set in motion at the end? Yes, yes and yes! The only problem was losing or breaking a piece. We did not have 3D printers back then to replace the boot if it went missing, alas. Apparently, a revamped version of the game swapped out the bathtub for a toilet, which is kind of weird.
Ants in the Pants. Not a board game. You flipped plastic ants into a pair of plastic pants (with suspenders for added difficulty) and the first to flip all ants in won. Simple, mindless, frenetic. A nice palette cleanser to all the brainier stuff.
Ker Plunk. Put a bunch of plastic sticks through holes midway through a chamber, cover with marbles, then remove the sticks without sending the marbles down to the bottom. Sort of a Jenga variant, but more kid-flavoured. The best part may have been that the player with the fewest marbles at the end wins. Now there’s a life lesson.
Down the Drain (WothPoint link). Weirdly, the version I played is not on BoardGameGeeks. Basically, you had a green plastic tube shaped like a drainpipe, with a grate on top. You dropped a bunch of fake coins in and used little toy fishing rods to try to fish the coins out (the coins and rod had magnets). Whoever got the most money won. I mean, not much. This was no Game of Life. A test of hand-eye coordination that would serve as warm-up for future video games, or maybe lawn darts. I did find an image! And the drain was actually yellow, proving memory is a LIE.
Gnip Gnop. It’s Ping-Pong spelled backwards! And it’s more fun to say. You used paddles to flip ping pong balls through circular cutouts in a plastic barrier. You won by losing all your balls. Another important life lesson. Like Ants in the Pants, this was a great game to play if you were hopped up on sugary soda and just wanted to spazz out.
Yahtzee. Not a board game. Shaking six dice in the cup was great for driving people crazy. I liked the Triple Yahtzee variant, because it was fancier and allowed a tiny bit of strategy. My uncle, who worked at a print shop, would print off scoresheets for us, so we didn’t have to buy extras when we ran out.
Boggle. The weirdest thing about Boggle is I still have it, sitting in its original box on a shelf in the bedroom. Flip the hourglass (how quaint) and write down all the words. Simple, but for a guy who would eventually pursue a BA in English, irresistible.
There are more games, but they are currently on the periphery of my memory. I’ll update this post when they inevitably come back to me.
Further updates:
Scrabble. How could I forget Scrabble? A timeless game that made me think, learn new words, learn that a bunch of words were not really words and when you won, it made you feel smart! And maybe a little lucky, too.
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