These 80′s & 90′s Boardgames Are Now Considered ‘Vintage’
Before video games and the internet, there were board games, most of which were rubbish but you lusted after them anyway.
1. Ghost Castle: The advert alone was guaranteed to make you s**t your pants.
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2. Bizzy Buzzy Bumbles: collect magnetic balls using a bee attached to a headband that weighed a ton, making you look as though you’d had a seizure. An annoying game with an even more annoying advert but somehow they made you want it so bad.
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3. Operation: ‘you’re the doctor, it’s so much fun to play’, Actually it was really intense, especially if it belonged to your big sister and she wouldn’t let go on it, so you had to sneak into her room and play it on the sly (by yourself).
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4. Bed Bugs: Really, really loud and intense game. Plastic bugs jump up and down on a vibrating piece of cardboard. The sound was horrific, like being trapped in a car with a massive cicada. The volume was not depicted in the advert but very much added to the feelings of intensity.
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5. Atmosfear: Terrifying interactive board game with VHS that spoke back to you.
6. Mr. Pop! Another really intense game, possibly based on an Operation Yewtree e-fit. You wound up the timer and frantically assembled Mr. Pop’s face to match your chosen card, one of which featured him casually smoking a pipe. You had to finish before he sprang up, shedding his features and disappearing back into the criminal underworld.
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7. Game of Life: ‘you could be a winner in the game of life…get married…have a baby’. This game was intense in the existential sense; you chose the life you wanted to lead and encountered expectation-dashing scenarios, whilst trying to hold on to your hopes and dreams. The person with the most money/least debt at the end won. They say children learn through play.
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8. Guess Who: A classic that’s still going strong today. Back in the day I used to scour my parent’s parties for Guess Who lookalikes and laugh at their expense. Now I am a guest at one of those parties.
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9. Dream Phone: ‘who, who, who’s got a crush on you?’ A cardboard boy and a disembodied voice.
10. Screwball Scramble: Absolute classic. More against the clock intensity. The ‘blind maze’ was impossible but everyone cheated and took the lid off and you know dat!
11. Hungry Hippos: they’re hippos and they’re hungry…for marbles…which you will lose within a week. The sound of plastic frantically smashing against plastic was so incredibly intense. All these games were so intense.
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12. Mouse Trap: The queen of all boardgames. Don’t even bother playing the game, just build the trap and set it off over and over and over. Then take it too far and fill the yellow diving pool with water and get done by your mum.
