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Tuesday, March 21, 2017

Long Lost Board Games Bought At Garage Sales!

When it came down to toys, I think that most of mine were used - at least they were for the first eight years of my life, anyway.

Fortunately, my sisters really liked gender-neutral toys, so I ended up having tons of treasures to play with from the Weebles treehouse to leftover Lego pieces from Lego sets that couldn't possibly be completed.  I didn't care if they were old or new...as long as they were fun to play with, I was definitely interested.

In fact, I think that some of the greatest toy finds that I have ever come across have been at garage sales.  Where else can you find such treasures for a fraction of the price that people originally paid for them?  And this includes eBay, which I regularly would pay up to $30 in SHIPPING COSTS just to purchase one small thing!

My favourite thing to buy were old board games.  Especially games that weren't as well known as "Clue", or "Monopoly", or "Scrabble".  To me, these sorts of games were worth getting a hold of just for the nostalgia factor, and also to try and figure out how to play them.  In some, the instruction manual came with the games, but in others, I was forced to make up my own rules, and hope that I was playing it the way it was supposed to.

Unfortunately, I no longer own these games (and you know what, I have no idea where they ended up...for all I know, my family could have sold them).  Whatever the case though, these were some of the ones I owned.  Do you remember them at all?  And do any of you still have them?



SHARK ATTACK

Well, all right...I suppose this game isn't all that rare.  It was definitely a must have game to own when I was a kid - but I didn't get my hands on it until I saw it for sale at a garage sale.  It's the game with a battery powered shark that could swallow up your fish token if you didn't roll the right colour on the dice.  It was a game that almost brought forth as much anxiety as "Perfection", only using sea creatures.  Eventually the shark died (and wouldn't move no matter how many batteries I tried), and the game was rendered useless.  But for the time that I owned it, it was fun to play.



THE SMURF GAME

This is a game that I thought was a good idea at the time (I liked the Smurfs cartoon and thought that this would be a great game to play).  But all you really have to do is move your Smurf character to the final HOME space at the end.  It was very anticlimactic, and not much thought was placed into it at all.



THE GARFIELD GAME

This game almost becomes as boring as the Smurfs game, but there are twists to this game to make it more fun.  Garfield can set rules to the game using Player Cards, and these rules can make you miss turns, go only when you roll an even number, and you can even blindfold Garfield and keep rolling the dice until you roll an odd number.  The ultimate goal of the game is to earn three rings by going around the course three times.  Again, it could be made more fun, but at least it's better than the Smurf game.



I.Q. 2000

One of the bad things about buying trivia games at yard sales is the fact that sometimes you might get questions that were extremely outdated.  This game was originally released in 1984, which meant that every question was about events that took place before that time period.  Which wouldn't have been so bad had I not found this game in 1991.  Needless to say, I always did terribly at this game as a kid.  But the concept was fun.  You had to answer questions to get further into the solar system where your ultimate goal was to make it to the lost planet of Quizaar.  In retrospect, it would've made a great game...but not for someone who grew up in the late 1980s and 1990s.



TV GUIDE'S TV GAME

Again, this game like I.Q. 2000 would be useless to a millennial.  There is no question about a television show that was released before 1984.  But this was also a game that I could actually play.  I watched a lot of older television shows when I was a kid, and I could answer questions as well as some of the adults in the room.  The way the questions were printed was really unique - they were printed in a set of four TV Guides!  I often wish that they would have released an updated game for the 1990s and 2000s.  It really wasn't a bad concept for a game at all.



WHERE IN THE WORLD IS CARMEN SANDIEGO?

As a computer game, it reigned supreme.  As a board game, it sort of lost its luster.  The funny thing is that I think the losing contestants on the PBS game show of the same name actually received this game as a consolation prize!  It is one of the few games from my youth that I still own today, and it's still fine to play - though the world has changed a lot in the 27 years since this game was first released.  I reckon some of the questions about the Soviet Union would make someone scratch their head and go "HUH?"



WHEEL OF FORTUNE

This is another game I wish I still had, just because of the really cool puzzle board that came with it.  You could actually reveal letters just like Vanna White did on the television show.  I just wish the wheel piece was more elaborately done than just a plastic arrow spinner, but hey, it was a great game.  Again, I wish I still had it.



FIREBALL ISLAND

YES!  I so remember this game, and it is another one that I would LOVE to get my hands on again.  It was a three-dimensional game that took place on a giant mountain with rivers, caverns, and a gigantic idol statue that could spit out fireballs (red marbles).  The goal of the game was to get the sacred ruby that the idol was guarding and reach the end of the game board to escape.  This game was such fun to play.

Anybody else remember these games?  Share your stories here!

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