Rocketship Weird Retro Captain's Blog - Weird Retro

Board GAmes: Beat The Border (1971)

18/9/2015

Hey! Tell you what, lets create a board game based around Mexican drug running cartels! That'd a be a great game for all the family. Beat The Border was published by the appropriately named Border House Ltd., in 1971. A game for 2-4 players, where your job is to buy kilos of drugs from over the border and then sell them on back in the United States at profit. The aim of the game to make as much money as possible from your drug dealing.

Think Breaking Bad the board game... Where you start with $1000 seed money to buy your drugs. Nip over the border, do a deal with Edwardo, Renaldo, Jose, etc... Then get back over the border without being detected, so you can sell them on in cites across the United States.

If you're carrying kilos you can be busted by various U.S. government agencies. But there are additional things you can buy throughout the game to help you get away with your new business venture, like dodgy lawyers and fake I.D.'s. You play the game until one player reaches the pre-set financial goal, usually around $25,000 to $100,000, as the suggested limit of the game rules. So get your big bad Heisenberg on and see if you can Beat The Border!

Board Games: After The Holocaust (1977)

11/8/2015

Released in 1977, during the Cold War, After The Holocaust is a strategy board game for 3-4 players. The game is set, some 20 years after a nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. The players control regions of the nuke ravaged United States and Canada, as they play out a economic, military and political simulation in ten turns.

Each turn of the game consists of five rounds, which are; a production round; a trade round; a consumption round; a military/political round; and a finance round. The rounds contain distinct phases within them. Like the production round, contains a basic production phase, a second production phase and a mobilization phase... Bored yet? Yep, After The Holocaust is one of those games that is so long and involved, that you get it out, set it up. And decided it's better to go down the pub, than spend the 6 hours playing time on this thing.

But there are those that have bothered, and even gone further. With the Weird Wide Web full of forums dedicated to the game. People have designed economic strategies, flow-charts of play, expansions, and play variants. But that's not the strangest part of the game. Hidden with the complex rules, and explanations, is that despite the devastation of the country, and people being taken back to the Dark Ages. The Federal Reverse Bank still exists and is still a functioning entity. So it's not the ants or the cockroaches that'll survive Armageddon, it's the American dollar!

Mad Max, the bankers edition!

Board Games: Betsy Ross And The Flag (1961)

16/7/2015

Advertised as a "thrilling historical game", Betsy Ross and the Flag transports players to the historically inaccurate time in 1776, when Betsy Ross didn't design and sew the first American flag. But hey, lets not stop some historical inaccuracies get in the way of a good board game. As Transogram didn't when they published the game, based on the Landmark Book series.

As a player, you play Betsy, replete with sewing basket. You travel around the 13 original colonies, going to their town halls, to collect pieces of the flag. When you've collected all 13 pieces, and assembled your flag, players must make their way to the Flag Committee. The first player to make it to the Flag Committee and present their flag, is the winner. It's all just to thrilling for words. Seeing how there's no evidence that Betsy made the flag, or that there was even a Flag Committee, we'll file this game under the "fantasy" section.

Board GAmes: Green Ghost (1965)

15/6/2015

The first, and probably one of the only board games designed to be played in the dark. Tag-lined as, "The Exciting Game of Mystery that Glows in the Dark." Players worked their way through a 3-D ghost town that sat on a board supported by stilts, with trapdoors in the playing board.

Players spun the large Green Ghost (supposedly modelled on The Blob), to tell them how many spaces to move. As they collected keys to the trapdoors, and searched for the 12 hidden "ghost kids", one of which was called Kelly, and was the lost child of the Green Ghost. But which one? When all 12 ghost kids have been retrieved from the traps, they are placed in little holes on the Green Ghost spinner. The spinner is spun one last time, and whichever child he points to is Kelly, and the player that found that child is declared the winner.

The game was made by Transogram. mass-produced the game in 1965, then sold its toy interests to Marx Toys in 1970. The game became very popular, and original versions are highly collectible. In 1997 Marx Toys produced a 30th Anniversary edition of the game.

Board GAmes: Uranium Rush (1955)

14/5/2015

At the height of the atomic age, encouraging kid to play with radioactive materials seemed all the rage. There was the Gilbert Atomic Energy Lab, where literally kids were handed radioactive materials to play with. Then there were board games like Uranium Rush, which encouraged kids to get out to "them thar hills" and go prospecting for uranium themselves. Through some comic books, kids could even order their ever own Geiger counter, to use to find radioactive materials with.

Uranium Rush was a Gardner Games product from the mid 1950s. The information just to the left of the cactus on the top of the box (above) indicates that it was an "Educator Approved" Prestige Toy for 1955. Players begin with $15,000 and prospect for uranium in an area determined by a spinner (mountain, hills, or desert). Claims can be purchased for $1000 each and may be auctioned off or tested for uranium.

This involves plugging in an electric "Geiger counter" into the holes in the gaming board, that produces a buzzing sound if uranium is discovered. The claim is then sold to the federal government for $50,000. Players alternate turns until all claims have been staked and the person with the most money is declared the winner. An exciting electronic board game for all the family, from the crazy days of the Atomic Age.

Board Games: Capital Punishment (1981)

3/5/2015

Designed as a satirical side-swipe at the American legal system, Capital Punishment was a board game produced in 1981 by Hammerhead Enterprises. The Monopoly style game was made to make a political point, but teeters on the edge of being creepy. In the game, a player may win by manoeuvring all four of his "criminals" in such a way that they are all get Life Imprisonment, are sent to Death Row or get the Electric Chair. Or the player may use his two "liberals" to spring the opposing players' criminals from the "Path of Justice" and sending them back onto the streets.

Once released onto the streets the opponent's now innocent citizens can become victims of violent crimes, and thus being innocent, the dead victims get to go to heaven. Thus making two ways of winning. Get your criminals all sent down, or kill off all your opponents. Yeah, even as a purposely satirical game, this one is weird.

Hammerhead Enterprises also produced the satirical board game Public Assistance: Why Bother Working For A Living in 1980. They were a Maryland based board game maker, that was right-wing and anti-liberal, which maybe goes some way to explain the oddities of these games.

Board Games: Is The Pope Catholic!?!

19/4/2015

A board game for those Roman Catholics to good old days of the church, when it was much more strict, filled with rules and utterly out of touch with the modern world. Is The Pop Catholic!?! Sub-titled the Catholic Nostalgia Game, was the brainchild of two brothers from Boston, who wanted to make a tongue-in-cheek take on the church before the Vatican II.

Released in 1986, the game tests players knowledge of pre-Vatican II doctrine. The game is a sort of Catholic combination of "Trivial Pursuit" and ''Monopoly". Players mark their progress around the board laid out in the likeness of a rosary by advancing up the "church hierarchical ladder" from altar boy to pope, by completing "a six-decade rosary". Being a Catholic is obviously an advantage when playing!

The introduction to the game reads, "This game is dedicated to the "survivors" of the Catholic Church and the Catholic educational system which existed prior to and shortly after Vatican II. This game offers practicing Catholics, "fallen away Catholics," and those Catholics somwehere in between, the opportunity to re-experience those "golden years" of pagan babies, May Crowining processions, sin, Saturday afternoon confessions, meatless Fridays, sin, Baltimore Catechisms, ruler-battered knuckles, and sin... all of which led us to become "soldiers of Christ and heirs of heaven." Although the stated goal of this game is to become the "Pope," the underlying purpose is to look back, resurrect a memory or two, and perhaps find some humor and healing for that period in our lives." The brothers spent four years and $50,000 developing the game with the priests from Indiana advising them. Despite enlisting church help, as the brothers, "wanted to come across as basically respectful of the church", the game caused controversy among conservative church members, on its release.

Right-On Race Relations Board Games That Got iT Horribly Wrong.

9/4/2015

Tackling race relations issues through the medium of board games, on the one hand seems a perfectly reasonable if a bit touchy-feely liberal way of educating people about social issues. However on the other hand, it's a potential recipe for cringe inducing disaster. Involving embarrassingly naive stereotypes, there games that have been produced with all the right intentions, but have ended up being nothing short of shocking examples of how something as simplistic as a board game cannot in anyway express the deeply complex issues of race relations, or being part of a ethnic minority group within society.

Life As A Blackman: The Game (1999): Apparently game designer Chuck Sawyer wanted to express through this game his own personal experiences as someone from a minority group, trying to make their way through corporate America. So what do we have? An insight into what it's like to young and black in America? Not quite, it's more a game littered with black conservative Christian stereotypes of African-American culture. Like a Crosby Show reworking of Boyz N The Hood of board games. In the game players must make choices between good and evil, or between the church and a life of crime.

And that's only the start of how "black and white" the attitude of this game is. Players all start as 18 year old black males either in Glamourwood, Black University, the Military, or in the Ghetto. Church provides strength and guidance. Crime has consequences, and while lucrative, it also leads to frequent encounters with police and ultimately, prison. The first person to reach the Freedom space at the top of the board wins. The game attempts to deliver its political message through satire, that falls flat, and just ends up as a litany of racial and social stereotypes. Who the game was supposed to be aimed at is an utter mystery.

Black & Whites (1970): You'd think a game first published in the respected journal Psychology Today in March 1970, would have delivered a carefully considered game with a social conscience. What they actually delivered wasn't a game that helped to create awareness of the divide between blacks and whites, but inadvertently between the haves and have nots, irrespective of race. As blacks are portrayed as stereotypically poor and whites as wealthy, with stock dividends and wads of cash.

Even for the 70s, this game was woefully naive.

The game essentially blamed racial inequality on housing issues and made it impossible to win the game if you chose to play as a black player. Needless to say, it turned out to be one of the most controversial board games of all time and even merited an article in Time magazine: "The game, produced by Psychology Today Games (an off shoot of the magazine) now on sale ($5.95) at major department stores, was developed at the University of California at Davis by Psychology Department Chairman Robert Sommer. It was conceived as a painless way for middle-class whites to experience — and understand — the frustrations of blacks. In Sommer’s version, however, the black player could not win; as a simulation of frustration, the game was too successful. Then David Popoff, a Psychology Today editor, redesigned the game, taking suggestions from militant black members of 'US' in San Diego. The new rules give black players an opportunity to use — and even to beat — the System."

Board Games: The Sinking Of The Tinanic

30/3/2015

In 1975 Ideal Games decided to make a board game based on the sinking of the Titanic. You'd have thought after 63 years, time would have passed sufficiently for the game to pass relatively unnoticed. But no, the game courted controversy, and was pulled form the shelves for a while. In the UK the company had to change the name, but not the obvious image of the Titanic on the box cover it would seem, to Abandon Ship Game.

The game was played in two phases. In the first part players had to help passengers escape the ship. For every roll of a one or a six the ship (which rotated) would be turned, so it looked like it was going down. In part two, once in the life-boats, players must find food and water, by visiting islands!!! What islands? Not only did they make a game that some people found distasteful, they went and changed history too.

In the British version of the game, they simply changed the in-game story-line. The "ship" was now in the Pacific, and had struck a coral reef. Because that makes it all okay. The ending of the game was just harsh. After the Titanic had sank, a rescue ship would appear. The first player to land on one of the rescue ship squares won the game. All the other players and their passengers were left to drown at sea. A game for all the family right there.

Board Games: Dawn Of The Dead (1978)

25/3/2015

Produced as a tie-in the classic 1978 Romero zombie movie, Dawn Of The Dead the board game is now a rare find. Produced by the popular board game RPG game makers SPI, it's been disparagingly described as a cross between the board game Mall Madness and a zombie apocalypse. It's an early example of a board game for adults, where the goal is for the zombie to kill the humans, or for the humans to secure the four mall entrances. And offing all the zombies inside the mall, sniper style.

The game can be played with between 1 to 4 players. Yes that's right, you can play it on your own, if you are that geeky. In fact the website boardgamegeek actually recommends that the best way to play is on your own. Rather than playing with yourself, that's a totally different thing altogether and shouldn't involve zombies!

An original copy of the game is rare to come across, or should I say, people are charging through the nose on eBay for a tatty old copy of it. You'd have to pay in the 100s for a half decent version of it.

Not a perfect game, but a fun game all the same for any board game / zombie horror geeks out there. Which I know there are many. So because the game is so old, and out of copyright, it's available on the Weird Wide Web. You can get hold of all the game parts you need, and even an updated version, with a new map. Just print it off, maybe laminate it, and play away!

Link: Home Page Of The Dead