Classic Board Games Guide
Providing the perfect catalyst to any sibling disagreements board games were a key staple of childhood entertainment, especially as loading up early ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 games could take almost as long as a game of Risk……
Not all games relied on a board, but all had that element of competing to be the champion, from the more complex (for a child at least)- Monopoly and Game of Life to the wonderfully simplistic- Connect 4 and Hungry Hippo’s….
Here’s Seven Again’s guide to Classic Board Games-
‘Which animal’s name would best follow hungry?’ you can imagine the advertising execs musing whilst ‘thinking outside the box’- Hyenas? No. Hares? No. Er, Hammerhead Sharks? No!!…. and thus one of the noisiest and frantic of kids games was born involving you pounding the retractable mouths of one of four Hippo’s attempting to swallow as many small white marbles as possible. Was it fun? Briefly. Were you allowed to play it whilst your dad was watching Grandstand? Certainly not….
Connect 4 was a beautifully simple game which would often result in extreme surprise when your opponents 4-in-a-row appeared from seemingly nowhere. Rematches a-plenty would ensue. Today in pubs up and down the country you can hear claims of men and women alike of being ‘unbeatable’ at connect 4.There’s only one way to find out….
Er, the collection of escapee’s from the local mental institution? Some of the characters in this were plain scary. The premise being that you used a sequence of questions, eliminating possibilities of your opponents character.‘Male or female' was the inevitable opening gambit of Guess Who, questions of whether people were donning hats, glasses or moustachioed swiftly ensued.. Exceptionally playable and standing the test of time, the temptation must be there to once again utter- ‘Is your one Robert?’
A murder mystery classic, especially for those who used to pl ay ‘murder in the dark’ Quite simply you moved around a board of a country manor attempting to eliminate the room, weapon and murderer leaving you with a definitive option for each. The temptation was always to pair together the likes of Colonel Mustard and the Revolver, which never seemed to be the case. You inevitably ran out of clue pads, but it was still a game to capture the imagination of adults and kids alike. I’ve still never met anyone with a Billiard Room mind you……
One of the few onomatopoeic (well almost) games to inspire a generation. Essentially pulling out little sticks, whilst avoiding any marbles falling on your turn was the premise. There was a tangible suspense as you removed the sticks in the latter half of the game, and careful good work could be undone by a deluge of marbles from a wrong choice. A preserve of any final day of term, it remains popular today…
Spin the pointer, place your selected body part on the selected coloured square, fall over in a heap of people. This was the game in a nutshell, but there was a lot more to it than that. Testing flexibility and proximity to areas that you didn’t want to be close to were key parts of the game .Often fun, it really comes into its own once you’ve returned from the pub with mates….
A whole load of trouble for a few seconds of pleasure, the ‘Mousetrap’ analogy can be applied across numerous aspects of life, not least one which I’m sure a few women out there can empathise with!! No one really played the board game that came with it, the fun was building the fantastically complex set of devices to ultimately send the ‘trap’ in the title hurtling down. Despite the time it took to set up, boy was it worth it!!!!
This classic could bring out the competitive instinct in even the most docile of children. Essentially based on building a strategic property empire, in reality it involved buying every property you landed on regardless, and hoping to get the
Load up the horse, and keep on adding the somewhat obscure pieces, until he bucks the lot off. A game in the same suspense bracket as Ker-Plunk, it was easy to play and even easier to advertise. Which of you as kids weren’t sucked in by the advert with the grinning asinine faces of the kids as the pieces flew into the air? I certainly was, and strangely the moment of ‘bucking’ is as much fun as ever…
Relying on surgical precision the aim of the game was to remove various parts of the surprisingly happy patient’s body, without setting off the buzzer and the red nose light!! Some were easy, some extremely difficult. Adam’s Apple anyone? Everyone wanted the funny bone, and steady hands were a must. Not advisable on a hangover, but then again I suppose it's primarily for kids…
We love all the old board games, although we have grown up now and enjoy classic casino games too. From Blackjack to Roulette.
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