It's just a complicated game

[vovat]

Before I get into the main content of this post, I feel I should mention that I received some Oz buttons from shadarko, and they look cool. Now I just have to figure out something I can do with all these buttons I keep getting. If I were still in school, I could attach them to my backpack.

So, as I indicated in my last post, this one is about board and card games I played as a kid. I did play a lot of the more common ones (Monopoly, Life, Trivial Pursuit, Uno, etc.), but I decided to focus here on ones that aren't quite as famous. I played most of these with my dad and brother; my mom never particularly liked games, nor do I know anyone now who cares for them. Around when we first started dating, I made bethje try a few of these, but I haven't tried that in more recent years.

Uncle Wiggily - Based on a series of books I never read, this was one of the first games I can remember playing. The winner was the first to reach the end of the track (at Dr. Possum's), and movement was based on cards with rhymes on them.

Garfield - There have probably been a lot of games based around the most heavily merchandised feline in history, but this particular one essentially made Garfield the bad guy, telling the players what to do (in the form of cards that were drawn whenever someone landed on a "Garfield Changes His Mind" space).

Mille Bornes - This French card game is apparently not THAT obscure, but I haven't seen that many other people talk about it. You have to play enough mileage cards to reach your goal, and you can use bad cards (flat tires, accidents, etc.) to hinder the other players. I played this one a lot growing up.

Dungeon! - My mom bought this one for me at a yard sale on the day I finished one of the later elementary school grades. It's made by TSR, the company that created Dungeons & Dragons, and is sort of a much simpler, board-based version of D&D. The object is to kill monsters (which is accomplished by rolling the dice) and obtain treasures. There are four character classes (elf, hero, superhero, and wizard), but we usually just played with everyone as a superhero to make things simpler. My dad was never really into complicated games. I remember one year he and I both got Avalon Hill games for Christmas, and he refused to even try them upon looking at the rules. Anyway, Dungeon! was pretty fun, although I don't recall being all that good at it. I think Beth beat me at it the one time I forced her to play it with me, and that was with no prior experience on her part.

Bonkers - Not associated with the Disney Afternoon show about the cartoon cat who became a police officer (which I'll somewhat ashamedly admit to having watched back when it was on), the gimmick to this game was that the players essentially created the game anew every time.

Dragonmaster - A Hearts-style card game, where there's a penalty for taking certain cards (which ones varied from one hand to another. One distinguishing feature of the rules (reproduced here in text format without word wrap, which makes them difficult to read) is that they included a big, long back story that had nothing whatsoever to do with the actual gameplay.

So, has anyone else played any of these? And what games did you like to play? Or are you one of those all-too-common game-haters? And why am I asking these questions, when the posts where I practically beg for comments tend to be the ones that don't get any?

Comments

[zimbra1006.livejournal.com]

OH MY GOD UNCLE WIGGLY!!!! Just the other day I brought that up to my mom and said "remember that weird board game we used to play at Grandma's?" and she didn't know what I was talking about! hahaha. I am glad someone else on earth can verify its existence.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I remember playing it a lot as a kid. All the people who mention it online seem to think it's boring and that the rhyming gets tedious, but they're probably considerably older than I was at the time I enjoyed it.

I actually found a treasury of Uncle Wiggily stories in the children's room of the college library where I used to work. I was sort of tempted to try reading it, but I never got the chance.

[rockinlibrarian.livejournal.com]

We had Uncle Wiggly but I think we only played it once. We got it in a pile of used games. It's possible there were missing pieces and that's why we didn't play it more.

We need Dungeon! in this house.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I don't think Uncle Wiggily had all that many integral pieces, just the tokens, and I'm sure something else could have been substituted for those. On the other hand, if some of the cards were missing, that might have been a problem.

Dungeon! might be worth getting, if you can find it. I understand that there was a deluxe edition that had a bigger board and included being wounded and healing, but I've never seen it.

[arfies.livejournal.com]

Yup; Uncle Wiggily was da bomb. Yay for well-dressed rhyming bunnies in pinstripes and top hats!

Trivial Pursuit is my forte.

We also played Trouble, Battleship, Risk, Stratego, Clue, Chinese Checkers, Checkers, Chess, Mouse Trap (though I never think we actually played the game; just made the contraption), Candyland (unfortunately my brother chewed up the cards), Monopoly, Junior Scrabble, Pegity (the family tradition), Tripoley, Password- you name it, we probably played it. Probably still have it in the basement, too.

[yosef.livejournal.com]

I always set up the Mouse Trap contraption without actually playing it. I did the same with the Goofy Golf Machine if anyone on earth remembers that.

[zimbra1006.livejournal.com]

totally. did anyone actually play Mousetrap the real way? We always just wanted to set off the trap (which never really worked).

[bethje.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I do remember it getting stuck before. But I thought that might have something to do with my cousin having set it up on the washing machine.

Just turn the crank that snaps the plank and boots the marble right down the shoot. Now watch it roll and hit the pole and knock the ball in the rub-a-dub tub, which flips the man into the pan. The trap is set here comes the net!

That might not exactly be right. It's off hte top of my head.

[zimbra1006.livejournal.com]

haha, that sounds right! all I remember was flipping the man into the pan.

I went to the Maker Faire earlier this year where they had a life sized Mousetrap sculpture:
http://www.makezine.com/blog/archive/2007/04/maker_faire_the_lifesized.html

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I think I remember playing Mousetrap the real way, but it might have only happened once.

Did the life-size set have the man who dove into the basin?

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I don't know about the Goofy Golf Machine, but I remember there was a game called "Barn Buzzin' Goofy" at the toy store where I worked several years ago. I'm sure they aren't at all similar, aside from the inclusion of Goofy.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Oh, Tripoley is another one I played a lot with my family. We never had Candyland, but I remember playing it at school. If they'd made the Winnie-the-Pooh version when I was a kid, I probably would have wanted it. {g} I'm not sure what Pegity is, though.

[punterschlagen.livejournal.com]

My family played Mille Bornes quite a lot. My little sister could never remember the name and always called it "Mel Torme". While I was still full-time teaching I was actually developing a rhythm-teaching game based on it.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

How did that work?

[punterschlagen.livejournal.com]

I stole all of the game mechanics, just substituted note values for mileage (the idea was to get to 4 full measures, or 16 beats). I called it Measure 4 Measure - I know, I'm so witty. Instead of Go and Stop I used Cue and Cutoff; hazards included Out of Breath, Broken Instrument, Meter Change (can only put down notes 2 beats long or shorter), and Out of Tune; remedies were Breath Mark, Repair Shop, End Meter Change, and Tuned Up; safeties were Pitch Pipe (always in tune), Instrument Insurance (no broken instrument), Composer (no meter changes), and Strong Lungs (never out of breath).

Also thought of making up a composer version of Clue, using actual compositions (It was Mozart writing his 40th Symphony in Vienna!) but never got around to it.

[shadarko.livejournal.com]

i guess you'll just have to go back to school

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Well, I've been considering that, since my current degrees don't seem to be of that much help in my career search. I guess if I do, I'll have to remember to put those buttons on my backpack.

[bethje.livejournal.com]

Quite often, I yearn to play Connect Four.

Dorothea told me maybe a month ago that she likes board games, so you should tell her to play something.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Do you have a Connect Four set?

Dorothea told me maybe a month ago that she likes board games, so you should tell her to play something.

Well, that would involve seeing her for more than two minutes at a time, wouldn't it?

I'm not sure what happened to all my old games. I think my dad took some of them with him to New Mexico, but which ones seemed totally random. I know he left the Trivial Pursuit set we'd gotten him for Christmas one year.

Garfield

[colleenanne.livejournal.com]

Ok, I too had a Garfield board game, but I can't tell if it's the one you had or not. I remember mine having some game pieces that involved something lasagna-y. I wish I remembered more.

I too like boardgames. I shall drive up to NJ to play with Nathan and Dorothea.

Re: Garfield

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I remember when we played Trivial Pursuit in Washington.

[vilajunkie.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Ooh! I loved Uncle Wiggly! I loved to put all the pieces together, and I think was happened is that some of the pieces got lost, or we played the game so much that the board wore out and fell apart.

I never, ever (to this day) played regular Monopoly. Too many rules. But I used to play Junior Monopoly all the time.

A couple times in middle school I had classes where we had to come up with board games, and I still have them. One was based on the book "O Pioneer!" and the other, of course, was based on Oz. The point of the Oz game was to answer riddles for the Woggle Bug and science questions for the Scarecrow (or maybe the other way around) and the winner got Ozma's wand. The playable characters were Dorothy (a pink Barbie shoe/ruby slipper), Toto (a plastic dog), the Tin Man (a plastic heart), the Lion (a plastic lion), and probably a couple other characters. There was something that had to do with Billina (which was a plastic yellow hen; hooray for yellow hens!) but I can't remember what it was. I have to refine the game and maybe get to play it at somewhere Ozzy.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I don't remember Uncle Wiggily having pieces you had to assemble, but I'm sure there were several different versions over the years.

At a Munchkin Convention back in the mid-nineties, I bought an Oz board game called "Follow the Yellow Brick Road," which included a lot of locations from the books. Game play was simple (you had to collect crowns from each of the four national capitals), but it was pretty fun.

[vilajunkie.livejournal.com]

I think my game was simply "Oz Mania!"

Do you still have it?

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it's on the shelf in my closet. I used to play it with my brother sometimes, but that was years ago.