A Slew of Board Game Commercials from Your Childhood
Remember when board games actually had marketing budgets large enough to hit the air waves? Mr Mouth, Bed Bugs, and Wrestling Superstars, all had mass media time slots.
And the blog urlesque has thrown together a list of 31 board game Commercials from ages past. It really has refreshed our memory of the olden days.
While there were a few gems here and there the rest of the product lines were quite sickening in retrospect. Remember the Musical jingles contracted by cheesy production houses done in between cutting tracks for crappy cartoon intros or public service announcement raps about plagiarism? See 1992's Crossfire, for instance. Remember the linear game play with tacked on gimmicks to hold kids short attention spans, like Playdoh bits that squished and died for your entertainment? It's amazing that board games made enough money to be on TV.
We also love how some lawyer thought it would be a good idea to remind us that the "Guess Who?" stickers don't actually talk. Holy litigation prevention. That commercial must have come out around the same time someone sued McDonald's 'cause their coffee was too hot. Still is too hot, BTW.
All of this giltz and glamor we're glad to have gone the way of the Dodo. Thank goodness for the Eurogame revolution to bring us out of that dark age of soulless board games production.
Board To Death has put together a very sweet review of the fantasy war and quest game Runewars [Amazon, Funagain].
We've written quite a bit about the title already so we won't talk you ear off today. Picture Twilight Imperium, set in a fantasy setting, and mixed with the adventuring aspects of Runebound, and you'll get the quick foundation of the elevator pitch. We'll let BoardToDeath.tv fill in the details.
Here's the game's official description:
"RuneWars is an epic board game of diplomacy, combat, and quests for two to four players. Designed by Corey Konieczka, RuneWars pits players against each other in a strategic game of battles and area control, where they must gather resources, raise armies, and lay siege to heavily fortified cities.
RuneWars includes over two hundred beautifully rendered cards and as many tokens, as well as nearly two hundred finely-detailed plastic miniatures, but perhaps most exciting are the modular hexagonal map pieces. Featuring stunning three-dimensional mountain terrain, these map pieces ensure that no two games are ever the same!
RuneWars takes place in the same popular fantasy universe as the best-selling board games Runebound and Descent: Journeys in the Dark, and dozens of fan-favorite heroes and monsters play their part. The wars for the dragon runes are beginning, and only one faction will emerge victorious. What would you do to claim the ultimate power?"
Sweet day of days. Last year we fell in love with Empire Total War, an 18th century turn-based board game mixed with real time tactical combat simulation chalk full with musket fire, mortars explosions, cavalry charges and fleet actions. Usually a year late the Creative Assembly produces an expansion pack with new maps and new campaigns, but this time they've taken a much larger step forward.
Today the series tackles the story of Napoleon Total War [Amazon] as the French Emperor marches through early 19th century Europe. The game is told via three new campaigns: Italy, Egypt, and the continental map of Europe. Standing in his way is a coalition of forces with such major players as England, Prussia, Austria and Russia. Play as either Napoleon in his epic military campaign (and try to do him one better) or try to successfully put up a road block bring France down to its knees.
The game also iterates on the already incredible tactical battle engine and campaign engine. For one, and perhaps the most exciting, Campaigns can be played with 2 people over the Internets. You can play either cooperatively or competitively on the campaign map, forging improbable alliances or sticking with this historic stuff - it's up to you. And on your turn, if you strike a battle with an opponent, your friend will control the opposition on the battlefield while you try to carry the day. Nobody sits there with bored eyes waiting for a battle to end; everyone is involved.
Other new features include more smoke effects, better garrisons of buildings during firefights, new troop types, better technology, a narrative campaign, a new suite of 19th century historic battles, unit attrition in enemy territories, and nuanced campaign maps including mountain pass choke points, four seasons to the year, and a higher level of detail.
The game came out today.. so you might be asking yourself how we could know all this stuff. Well the software team behind the game has published a series of preview movies like the one above. Give them a gander, they're well worth your time:
We'll quickly let you about our initial impressions of this Total War installment near the end of the week. If we're enthralled, then we'll post another series of Empire Total War Tips to go along with it.
Greed Corp: Chess Meets The Golden Child Meets Guns
Long time readers know that we don't shy away from computer games that emulate board games (see Empire Total War). Well Greed Corp looks to become one of those successful, yet lighter, bridges. The game involves elements of simplistic combat and movement, coupled with guns and a deeply strategic harvesting process that both reshapes and ultimately destroys the board. The winner is he who doesn't fall into the abyss.
Looks pretty sweet, and a nice little game for the online gaming console market place.
Welcome to the one-stop index page for all of our Holiday Board Game Gift Ideas for 2009! There have been some tremendous games that were released this year. Some released created new genres of games, others lovingly refined old formulas. We'll break down these top releases and let you know the perfect present for your gaming friend or love one, all while avoiding the frenetic crowds and annoying cell phone vendors at your crazy local mega mall.
So lets kick things off with our favorite game of the last year, Dominion, which has two new expansions this year!
We played a lot of games this month. A real lot. Its like we're waking from our standard Thanksgiving Turkey Hangover but it's only November 1st. Scary.
We played new games we've thoroughly enjoyed, like both Warhammer Chaos in the Old World board game, and the Warhamer Invasion Living Card Game. We played old classics like Power Grid, Dominion, A Game of Thrones, and D&D, and had a blast with all of them. Then we played the new Battlestar Galactica expansion Pegasus and left the table shrugging 'meh'.
Seriously though. So many games. So little time. If you pick up anything from this month, then we suggest Dominion Seaside, Warhammer Living Card Game, and Warhammer Mark of Chaos. Yes, two Warhammer titles. And we're not known to be Warhammer fans at all.
If you haven't heard of it, Microsoft Surface is an ongoing project to deliver a consumer level multi touch table top display. The platform is designed for all sorts of uses and to be placed horizontally, not vertically like a TV. This and the Entertaible have some serious potential to be a very slick platform for board gaming goodness in the year 'The Future.' Imagine getting board game software packs for all your favorite games, and no cleanup!
Also we should note that the software that SurfaceScapes shows here is a Proof of Concept, and in no way a full fleshed out product. It shows potential. The dice spawning animation feels particularly gimpy. We know it's a proof of concept at all, but come on. MakeDiceFallFaster=true!
Still, we're very excited any technology like this to hit the market, and we're glad that someone out there has keep the gaming eye on the price as these platforms mature. Keep it up guys!
Now if you're thinking to yourself "Jimminy Jillickers! Only three major things happened? What a crank shaft of a month!" then you'd be three slices o' cheese short of a proper egg sandwich (you need at least 5). Keep reaching for that rainbow.
Here are the other noteworthy stories from September:
Attention KMart Shoppers. The monthly subscription PC game Dungeons and Dragons Online has been relaunched by Turbine as a subscription free service as D&D Online Unlimited. Quite the amazing little feat if you ask us. You can download the game's client here (Windows PC).
D&D Online sticks you in the world of Eberron and lets you and your friends run instanced dungeons and quests as you level up your character in the 3.5 ruleset (though the server takes care of most of the dirty work in real time) Combat is positional, with quite a few distinctions than your standard MMO. For instance - you actually have to click your mouse to swing and actively block, Battles are very dynamic, instead of tank and spank, as fighters maneuver to intercept mobs and act as meat shields, clerics position themselves to heal, and rogues dodge and parry their way behind baddies to get some nice damage bonuses. And of course there are the Mages with their bag of tricks for any situation, and traps that only the rogue can sniff out and disable. Very interesting stuff.
We played D&D Online back when it first launched a few years ago. We enjoyed our time but a low level cap and a lack of long term content eventually turned us away. Now, years later, expansions have come out, the level cap has been raised, and best of all - it's free! Heck yeah. We're already planning an alternative D&D night where we all get online and bust heads as a party. Can't wait.
This morning we stumbled upon this amazing series shots from a Fallout LARP that went down last month in Russian. Now, don't get us wrong and don't read into the future content of this website ; we wouldn't even think to set foot in a LARP machine unless there were piles of cash some seriously hot chicks waiting inside (that's the American way). We love games and all, but there's one thing to play them, and it's another to want to live in them.
Still, some of these shots are so darn cool looking... almost like a scene from a full fledged Fallout 3 movie from the backlot at Universal. But these are people who made their costumes with their barehands. Dorky, sure, but artistic talent abound.
Of course, our admiration and suspension of disbelief is unsuspended when coming across evidence of the apparent dorkiness of some these people. We don't mean to bust on them, but ... dunno.. it's almost required if you want to cover your butt against the cool police.
Simply crazy - or crazy brilliant - take your pick. This jobber was built for two major reasons. The first was that it was hobbyist's dream, but more importantly it's the manifested answer to overly critical players of GamesByEmail.com. We remember some bickering last year regarding the 'trendiness' of the Random Algorithms the site used to create the dice rolls of their games. These weren't horrible algorithms, actually they were top notch, using numbers from Random.org and another tested random number generator algorithms. Still, that wasn't enough to silence the critics. Apparently players can get pretty defiant when a bunch of rolls don't go their way.
The new Dice-O-Matic should shut them up. Here's the full story.
Top 5 Board Games From Our Childhood (aka the 1980's)
We've been around the webosphere for a while, and some of you might have gotten to know us quite a bit. But still nothing paints a picture about our style of gaming better than regressing into our childhood memories and hand picking the best games from our younger years.
We've taken a considerable amount of time with this exercise, surveying the group and pacing the games in order using the most agreeable means possible. You could imagine this being a difficult process with all the pretty-haired egos sitting around our gaming table, so we just went all Stalin and 'liquidated' the unbelievers in our group. The survivors agreed upon the following list in short order:
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A Slew of Board Game Commercials from Your Childhood
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