The Monday Fossil - 90's Board Games

Remember the good ole days when wealth and power were measured by the number on your Super Soaker? You always hated that kid who was wielding the dual plasma rifles set to hollow point water spray, fueled by the 5 gallon backpack full of H2O.

 

Fuck this kid.

Well if water guns were dominating your backyard, it was board games that had a healthy market share of your basement. But not that crap where you plop on your couch and pop in a DVD. The "board games" of today require a lot of thinking, and that really defeats the purpose of them in my mind. Sure it's fun to recall how Arnold Schwarzenegger only had like 5 lines of dialogue in the original Terminator. But you know what's way more fun? 

Racing the clock to avoid a large, plastic, mechanical shark.

Or torturing playdoh made grapes.

The Squish'Em, Squash'Em, Squoosh'Em Game!!!!

Or picking the Sorry card when your opponent is one space from the mother ship. You weren't sorry. You were NEVER sorry. They need to rename that game Miserable. It took like 5 hours for someone to win. Life was so much easier when tough decision making was solved with the role of a dice. "Finally I rolled doubles! I can get out of this filthy jail cell." "Thank god I rolled an even number, I just missed being pummeled by that massive plastic cage from the sky."

That's not to say there were not disappointments.

Someone got me Mouse Trap one time. Sure the Rube Goldberg contraption was fun, but does anyone have any idea how the game is played. What the hell were those cheese slices for? 

Does anyone remember Domino Rally? The commercials depicted these jubilant children orchestrating this massive scene of events.

Apparently you were supposed to play in a black hole.

Dominoes falling perfectly, branching off to cause car crashes, huge motorcycle jumps, or even rocket launches. Sounds like a nice little saturday night? Yeah well the commercial failed to show that the game gives a new definition to the phrase, "Some assembly required." The worst was that after the 30+ hours of finger shredding construction, if you made one mistake, it's over. I remember having the first minute or so going perfectly according to plan. Smiles lit across our faces as the hard work was being rewarded by this evil knievel-esque display. But suddenly one domino went arye and cancelled the finale spectacle of the rocket launch. Those smiles quickly faded to anger as we came to the realization that Milton Bradley had betrayed us. I wont get into specifics, but lets just say that I was like a young Michael Bay directing that destruction.

The best board game commercial by far was the original Crossfire spot. I will post it once I figure out how to embed videos. It features all the essentials from 80's hair metal vocals to the losing kids spinning off into strange unknown galaxies. Unfortunately the game was a piece of crap.