Who here remembers Domino Rally?
It looked neat but it was annoying that you spent so much time setting up all those dominos…only to knock EVERYTHING down in just a few seconds!
I wonder how many hours that setup in the commercial took.
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You didn’t have to set a lot of them up. My friend had it. The ones on tracks like that were on hinges and you could just tilt them to one side and all the dominoes would stand up. There were flat tracks too. You just had to set up the ones in between. But it wasn’t really a board game.
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Board games marketed towards girls fascinated me; I also remember them as the commercial frequently turned up in rotation on our local TV stations.
Who knew that spoons on your nose, blowing bubble gum or drawing with your feet were all so glamorous? That’s the impression I got from this commersh.
Then you had the Sweet Valley High game based on the Sweet Valley Twins books; those books were geared towards girls so I never read them. Those twins always struck me as the most popular girls in school that wouldn’t give an MST3K loving weirdo like me the time of day.
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So… we’re all in agreement that games of Monopoly could only lead to destructive, distrustful, venomous squabbles and conflicts, yes?
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Pretty much.
The original purpose of the game was to criticize capitalism and wealth inequality. That makes sense as late in the game, it becomes easier for one player to win by bankrupting everyone else.
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Ah, I remember “malls”.
I’d like find who came up with the concept of “zit stickers” and shake my fist at them. Also this might be the most '80s thing ever.
(I don’t currently have either of these but I remember playing them with friends in my tween years)
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The rare board game that gave me ACTUAL NIGHTMARES as a kid.
From Board Game Geek:
“Shrieks & Creaks” is a cassette-driven game featuring a Talking Tombstone. Players move from room to room and use both the room keys and their own character key to try to advance. A tombstone-shaped speaker attaches to a standard cassette player. The speaker will only allow sounds through if the right combination of room and character key are put into it. If sounds come from the speaker, the corresponding room is blocked to that player.
(I didn’t take any of these pictures.)
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Believe it or not, my childhood best friend and I had many enjoyable games of Monopoly. But we never tried to be ruthless.
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On the topic of audio games…how about VCR games? These were big back in the 1980s and 1990s before optical disc & streaming technology rendered videocassettes obsolete.
I had the Three Stooges VCR game. I still think it’s back with all my other belongings in New York! You watched a 60 minute video with clips from various Three Stooges shorts; you had cards in your hands like “Ouch”, “Zonk”, “Whoops” and “Phooey” and you had a Stooge placard in front of you of either Moe, Larry or Curly which would be rotated each round.
When something happened on the tape, you gave one of your cards to a player with that Stooge placard. For example, if Curly gets slapped, that’s a “Zonk” and you give Zonk cards to the Curly player.
It’s a fun game and still holds up today!
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As a child of the 80s, I didn’t have any of those, myself, and I’m kinda surprised by that, because I was so keen on board games way back when.
BUT I do love that there was an episode of Community where a VCR board game figures heavily into the plot (with Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan playing the game’s host!).
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Also, I love board games and the Three Stooges, and this particular game sounds something awesome!
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Growing up everybody on my block was addicted to “Can’t Stop”
Over time only to realize literally no else had ever heard of it
It’s a good game! I promise
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Mentioned on the RPG thread:
Shadows of Brimstone is a fun game set in the Old West; it plays similar to Heroquest but is pricey at US$130!
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There were quite a few board games based on video games during the 1980s. I knew someone who had the Super Mario Bros board game.
Someone in first grade brought in his Pac-Man board game. (Photo courtesy of Boardgame Geek - PAC-MAN Game | Board Game | BoardGameGeek )
I heard from people who tried this game that it was too hard.
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Pente is one of my favs. Something about the glass beads makes me feel fancy I think.
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I’ve always enjoyed Rat Race, which is now out of print. There’s something about the unabashed pursuit of status and money that’s so enjoyably vulgar.
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My friend had it. I don’t remember it being hard at all. I do remember it being fun to eat up the marbles by pressing down on them with the Pac-Man piece.
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A game the family usually ends up playing at Christmas is Stramash. It is modular, so the ‘board’ can be expanded for up to six players. It is a pursuit game, like Ludo, where you have to get round the board first without your pieces being taken and returned to the start. But the extra dimension comes from the pack of cards, which can give you an advantage or interfere with opponents’ progress. Theoretically, you can help another player on occasion… but who wants to do that? 
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Technically not a Pyrrhic victory, which properly speaking is a win that comes at a horrific cost that makes it at best barely worth it. More of an empty victory.
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