Be Excellent To Each Other

Last night I bought this on eBay for a Christmas gift for Darwin, and I wondered if any of you played/had the same game in your yoof.



My cousin and I used to play this game and I’ve described it to Russell a few times but never knew what it was called until a bit of Googling yesterday, and I found this in really good condition, so I’m looking forwards to it coming and to wrapping it for Christmas, then having a play of it myself, haha!

Also, pics please of your favourite childhood games and toys.

I had this game called Generals. I don't remember much about it apart from that it had some sort of electronic sound. I was very young so god knows if I really knew how to play it.



As a kid my favourite toys were;



Pocket Scramble. Basically your usual LCD 'Game and Watch' type of thing but it was cleverly designed to try to do all five stages of the arcade game. I liked it.




The Pac-Man board game. Although again I can't really remember how it was actually played.


And, because I'm a basic bitch, I always loved Game of Life.

. I used to enjoy Game Of Life, and Darwin enjoyed it up until we found Game Of The Year in a charity shop, now he prefers that (the game is weighted heavily against women and people with December birthdays, of which I am both, so it can take a hike).

I never had the Pacman board game but I did have the board game of Frogger.

Yessss! My nan had that in her games cupboard and I've not seen it in some 20 years. Bringing back some memories here

@mimi yes we used to have lots of boardgames and I remember that there were patterns to it so you could tell when to make specific moves.

@blucey we had a game that was very similar to the Generals one called 'Admirals' which was just a board game and wooden blocks



Other unusual board games I remember (quite a lot of these were my uncle's)

Dads Army (apparently banned because of the use of swastika's)



Battle of the little big horn - I remember this as a really fun 2 player game where you were either the indians or the cowboys and some characters had special abilities (e.g General Custar could fire twice)



Mastermind



We also had Mousetrap but never played the game just built the big machine :-)

This was actually pretty decent:

Always loved downfall, connect four and guess who.

Don’t remember your game at the top, Mimi. Looks decent!

Stratego was the shit

Yep it’s a great game.

We had the Pac Man board game but I don’t know where it’s gone. Probably in my mum’s cellar going mouldy.
I’ve got the. Zaxxon board game in my loft but I don’t know where it’s come from.

I’d like to collect the full set of MB video game adaptations.

Ah, I love that you had this game! It was my favourite.

Someone brought Downfall into my school’s annual boardgames day and I was entranced by it. I think I spent most the day playing that.

I had Mastermind and Mousetrap, too. We’ve got the newer version of Mousetrap now, but it is NOT the same game. The pieces are more robust, which is nice, but the gameplay is all wrong. Instead of adding pieces to the contraption as you play, now you have to build the whole contraption before you start the game. It’s not a good game mechanic now.

As a kid I only remember building the trap and that was cool but the actual mechanics of the board game part were really awful. Which I only remember because there was a conversion of it on the Xbox 360 and it was zero fun.

That Dad’s Army game was never banned, as far as I can see. The closest it came to being banned was when eBay closed an auction for one copy because sales of items depicting swastikas/nazi memorabilia are prohibited from the site, but once they learned it was a family board game they immediately reinstated it. A non-story, but the DM, Torygraph, Express and the usual suspects went all out on their ‘PC gone mad’ bit.

Here is an only slightly more nuanced take from a more localised news source, after eBay reinstated the auction:

https://www.worcesternews.co.uk/news/48 ... army-game/

Weirdly, the game has recently been back on sale in Home Bargains, sans swastikas:

https://home.bargains/product/l34861/da ... board-game

So there has been a modern production run, for some reason. I’m not sure who the intended audience for that is, mind. I’m 45 now and see Dad’s Army as being before my time.

It’s actually worse now. There’s zero game play.

We had the Pac-Man, Mousetrap and Mastermind games in those exact boxes when I was a kid.

I used to love the Pac-Man game, even though in hindsight it was absolute shithouse.

That Mouse trap box looks Dr Seuss-y

I agree, modern Mouse Trap is shit.

I worked with a lady once who told me of the time one of her kids was supposed to be in her bedroom getting ready for school so of course, they were running late and tempers were short. Instead of getting ready, she was sat on her bed setting up Mousetrap.

It did amuse me.

The best version was the ITV Saturday morning gameshow.

I have really fond memories of some board games as a kid.

There are a few that everyone knows (and still exist today, like Pop-up-pirate and Kerplunk) but there are some that seem less widespread, like Ghost Castle or Torpedo Run, possibly because they were a bit of a nuisance to set up. There are two that really stand out to me as key parts of my childhood, even if they seem a touch obscure because not many people I speak to seem to remember them.

The first was Cathedral. I have super fond memories of playing that with my dad. It's funny, cos when I think about it we probably didn't play it all that much but clearly those times, those moments, have really stuck in my head and stayed there for a long time. Cathedral is a puzzly type board game with some strategy, it's all about trying to claim spaces while blocking the other players attempt to d the same. A poster for this game can be seen on the office wall during the film Big.



The pieces were cool gothic-y kind of style and I remember looking at them and thinking about what times would have been like in an ancient city and what these buildings would have actually been for.


Another little game that I remember fondly was called something like 'Pisa'. It was a 'skill' game that required careful placement of the little people on whichever coloured level was determined by the dice roll. It was easy to explain and quick to play, kind of like Jenga in some ways as it's tense but also funny when all the things come clattering nosily down. I've never visited the Leaning Tower of Pisa but I would like to one day, partially due to this game, and partially due to the weird euro children's TV series called 'Interbang' that was shown on cable TV.