Surveying the Gen X landscape and the origins of geek
I would like to play this game. Watch the commercial here. In 1977, Ideal repackaged it as Battling Spaceships for obvious reasons. A game board was added around the fighting ring, but the battling part is exactly the same. The box and commercial are below.
See more at Board Game Geek.
Read the note.
They’re playing a game called Battling Tops. I’ll do a separate post on that.
(Photo via Look-Around Lounge)
More and more, it’s the board games I want.
The live-action Amazing Spider-Man pilot premiered in September, 1977, and the series didn’t resume until April of 1978. The live-action Captain America TV movie was heading into production for an early 1979 release. Hence the “heaviest promotional support ever” for the games.
Starsky and Hutch was in the last year of its four-year run. The Scooby-Doo game is from ’73, and Casper is from 1959. Talk about staples. Scooby has turned out to be as enduring a character as Spidey.
I’m still not feeling the Star Bird. It’s so aseptic. Cool noises or no, ships by themselves have no personalities. I think a little plastic guy came with it, but it’s not the same. Same reason I never understood the Star Wars die cast vehicles.
The corporate letter is a nice prize: “I am certain that your sales will reflect a commensurate increase.”
(Images via eBay)
I know pop culture treasure when I see it. Look at that cover art! From the inside of the box: “Go BERSERK and play the exciting shoot-em-up game that’s just as much fun as the arcade game of the same name…”
You “shoot” your opponent by pressing down on the back of the game piece, activating laser-toting arms that swing up to knock over the enemy. (See a close-up detail of the maneuver in the last photo.)
Even though I’d love to play the game now, or at least sit down and analyze it as if I were a paleontologist and it were a well-preserved Velociraptor skeleton, in 1983 it would have been a far distant second to Berserk on a console or in an arcade. Hell, Berserk was already three years old in ’83, so I would much rather have been playing Atari’s Star Wars or, if I could find it, Discs of Tron.
And that’s what’s so curious. Themed tabletop games were meant to extend the experience of the product they referred to (i.e. The Black Hole: Space Alert Game or Star Wars: Escape from Death Star Game), but Stern’s Berserk, like nearly all Golden Age video games, had no real story or environment or universe to extend—the joy was only in playing for as long as possible. Berserk had no franchise, either, unlike Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, or Frogger, all of which had board games (and cartoons, etc.) named after them.
Tabletop games are making a comeback today, thanks in part to a diversifying gaming culture (inspired and celebrated by Wil Wheaton’s Tabletop), and thanks in part to the exhaustion starting to creep into our eyes and brains from staring at screens for so many hours every day.
It’s nice to see and touch a real game board and sit next to people in physical space. It’s nice to talk to the people you’re sitting next to, not just about the game you happen to be playing, but about whatever comes to mind as you all sit there together feeling grateful that you have the friends you have and that you’re able to be together once in a while, even if it’s only for a few hours.
Incidentally, Milton Bradley’s Berserk isn’t even listed on Board Game Geek.
Hasbro’s 1982 G.I. Joe relaunch marked the beginning of probably the greatest action toy line ever produced. Series one consisted of 16 figures (including four vehicle drivers and the mail-in Cobra Commander), seven vehicles, the (flimsy as hell) Sears exclusive Missile Command Headquarters, and a Collector Display Case.
Here we see the Mobile Missile System (MMS) and Heavy Artillery Laser (HAL) in their natural habitat, a cluttered, wood-paneled living room (or den) centered by a TV whose four channels came in relatively clearly only when the cranky rabbit ear antenna was coaxed into the perfect position. (Can anyone make out who’s/what’s on the screen? My first thought was Barney Miller.)
In the bookcase behind the happy kid, more evidence of the flora and fauna of early ’80s America: 8 tracks and board games, Mastermind among them.
(Original photo via Brotherwolfe (Kary Nieuwenhuis)/Flickr; G.I. Joe images via Yo Joe!)
Some of you will remember a controversial film from 1984 called Silent Night, Deadly Night (the working title was “Slayride”), in which a traumatized teenager goes nuts, puts on a Santa suit, and starts killing folks. Well, right before he loses it, Billy (that’s his name) works at Ira’s Toys, and that’s what you see here.
Toys of note include Jabba the Hut and Luke Skywalker, Hot Wheels Wipe-Out, Stomper: Badlands Trail, Matchbox Super Garage, Castle Grayskull, and, best of all, the psychedelic Krull board game. Get in my closet! Also, in the very last shot, you can see a massive, nondescript AT-AT box behind Grayskull.
Thanks goes to Geektarded for spying the goodness and grabbing the screenshots. Special thanks to Transformer World 2005 for the heads up (and the mention).
Really? I must have seen this movie a hundred times when it first came out on video (it’s still one of my all-time faves), but I had no idea there was a game. The cool illustration on the instructions title page is by Bill Willingham. You can see his signature on the plane. The second drawing—the “crazies” coming out of the sewer—might be an Erol Otus. Isn’t that an “EO” in the top right corner?
I would love to play this baby.
(Images via Board Game Geek and eBay)
Operation needs no introduction, obviously, but how about that plastic shark poking out from the right side of the photo? That’s The Game of Jaws. As John Kenneth Muir reflects, many of us were too young to see Jaws when it first came out, so the only way we could participate in the phenomenon/hysteria was through merchandise like this.
The object of the game is similar to Operation. The box (image via Muir) about sums it up.
And how sweet is that red velvet and leather chair/throne upon which our presumptive dad is scratching his crotch? If someone could wrap that bad boy up and drag it under (or near) my tree, I’d be much obliged.
This is the first of a series of Christmas morning shots. Stick around.
Yeah, I just bought it. Can you make out the shrink wrap surrounding the box, nerds? That’s right. It’s never been opened. I win.
Who the hell is going to play this with me, you ask? Not my wife, obviously. She won’t even let me buy a Winnebago.
There can be only one person, really. He knows who he is. Yes, I refer to friend J.
Friend J. is very probably not going to be happy about it, because friend J. isn’t big on kiddie board games based on a much maligned Disney movie that attempted to capitalize on Star Wars (irony abounds).
In other words, friend J. doesn’t share my obsession with The Black Hole. But that’s too bad. Because The Black Hole is awesome, and he’s going to play this awesome game with me.
There will be vodka.
Via J.R. Jenks/Flickr, circa 1981. On the top left of the bookshelves I see two board games, Snoopy Come Home and Space Hop. I remember the first one, but not the second. Here’s a shot of the back of Space Hop.
I’m intrigued, but apparently the game was designed for very young kids, and the data is very much out of date.
2 Warps to Neptune 