Best of Old School Games

 Of course, my favorite is Scrabble cuz I'm a word junkie. I am now anyway. It wasn't my favorite growing up because my vocabulary was limited. But I love it now even when the words all tend to pile up on one corner of the board. The challenge of finding a word to get out of a jam like that is so much fun. We have a Super Scrabble game that is bigger and has quad letter and word scores. More board than anyone needs, but it makes for a longer game and who doesn't want more Scrabble?

Trivia Pursuit is right up there. I'm one of those people that spits out random trivia bits during conversations and this game is why. I learned more about history and science from this game than I did in school. It's the way my brain works... I guess I need the fun aspect to learn. Still, nothing about sports has infiltrated my brain. I even like certain sports, and I can deal with the questions about the rules of some of the games, but most of it is statistics and they just fly right over my head. I try for the Sports pie first to get it out of the way. Note, I've chosen pictures of the classic boards, because that's what I grew up with.  No hate for the updated versions... but you know how it is. 😁

I had to throw Battle Ship into the mix. The old peg version. Still got me one! And we still play occasionally. I had the Electronic Battleship growing up too with the sound effects and a light display to keep track of your hits. But there's nothing like playing with those pegs.

I like card games as well. It's just the two of us, so getting into the more complicated games like Canasta isn't always convenient. I loved Canasta as a kid, and my mother taught me how to play it two handed (one on one),but as I've grown up I've discovered that it really is better played with partners; four or more players. I play it on the computer with AI partners and opponents and then I don't play for a few years and forget the rules. That's okay, there's always poker. My husband and I play a "world series" of poker where we do several different versions of poker just betting chips while we watch television. It's very relaxing and always fun. I like the sound of the cheap plastic poker chips we have.

And so is Yahtzee. I love Yahtzee! It's like poker, only it's dice. And there's just something so satisfying about rolling dice. After we run out of score pad we just make our own. Heck, you can get your own dice - there's so many colors out there. It's a game that you don't really even need to buy as a game... just slap it together on your own.  I could play this for hours.

Uno is wonderful too. Not so much when I was a kid. This is a hard game to lose to when you're a kid, but I've come to love it. And I still love to play it from time to time.

I have to give a special mention to the Game of Life. I loved it growing up. I still like it a lot and will happily play it, although I see it as a little silly nowadays. But this game (of all things...) somehow inspired fan fiction in me. A few years a go I drew up a Real Life game as a parody.  I recreated the board with all kinds of depressing fines and pitfalls (doctor bills, car repairs, your horse loses at the races, etc.) and I made up my own career and home cards as well. There was no college at the beginning and high school graduation was optional... you weren't stopped for it - you had to land on it to get it. The jobs included welfare, baby sitting, and squeegee boy on 10th street. The most glamorous home was your mom's basement. And retirement was either the state penitentiary,  a nursing home or work until you die. Please keep in mind that I grew up reading Mad Magazine and my sense of humor is actually much darker and twisted than most people know, so this is pretty funny to me. I feel like I need to tweak it again because it has one or two jobs in it that are still too respectable. LOL! ... Life... 😛😛

Then there's the games that we both love and play occasionally, but they aren't really practical for two people. It's not as challenging to solve the mystery of Clue with only two people playing. It makes for a relatively quick game, but you don't get to feel nearly as smart when you win because by the time it's nearly over it's pretty obvious whodunit and it's really just a race to the right room so you can call out the murderer. Monopoly can go on for days with two people. My goodness, I love Monopoly and so does my husband, but after a few hours we get tired. We write down our money and properties, where our pieces are on the board, and who's turn it is intending to pick it up again the next day, but we usually don't.  I see memes on Facebook that indicate that all games of Monopoly end up with an upturned table because someone was mad about losing. I assume that's because it is such a long running game, but it's never been that way for me because I love the game and I genuinely don't mind losing.

 Probably because it does take so long to play, even with four people. But I think games like Monopoly help to teach people how to be good losers and I think it's because of the lengthy play time. One of  my favorite childhood games was War, which is basically just a high-card game. Omg, you talk about a game that just goes on and on forever... especially if it was just me and one of my brothers. I see now that it was a good way of keeping a little kid quiet, because I did like it and would sit for a long time playing it. But even when I was mad about losing other games as a kid, this one never made me mad because the "lead" would sway back and forth and back and forth. Just because I had a little bit of a smaller stack didn't necessarily mean I'd lose. I was excited when I was finally at a point where I could tell that my brother's stack was so small that I'd soon win, but I was also almost glad when I was finally down to a few cards and about to lose because I was tired and ready to stop anyway. That didn't mean they didn't have to make me play out to the end a few times to ensure that I learned how to lose peaceably, but it wasn't much of a challenge with War.

 Losing isn't much of a challenge with any of the games I've posted so far... but there are always exceptions. I still don't like to play Risk. It still gets on my very last nerve every time. And I know why. The reason I don't mind losing at almost any other game (I mean anything.. Chinese Checkers, Jenga, Sorry!, Operation, you name it...) is because of the element of chance. Sometimes you just don't land on the right spaces at the right time; sometimes you just get dealt a bad hand or the odd letters... it's part of the fun. Risk is a strategy game. It's won by out-thinking your opponent and it burns me up to know that I don't have the mind for it. Even if I got the opportunity to begin the game with an abundance of military pieces, I could never win. I can never win. And why does the attacker get more dice? What is even up with that? To this day it seems so unfair. And Chess... dear Chess. Chess is actually a heart breaker for me. You see, I genuinely love Chess. And I totally suck at it. I know it well enough to teach it to anyone and within three games, I'm being humiliated by the person I taught it to. Oh, I don't go around crying or throwing tantrums but I'm genuinely frustrated and even angry about losing in either of these games because it makes me feel very stupid to be perfectly honest. I'll typically turn down a request to play Risk... but I do still like to get Chess out once in a while... maddening as it is.

Love the classic board games!