He Got Game

As I may have mentioned earlier this week, we spent the Easter weekend up at my parents’ house in Medford. Going back there always gives me a chance to reflect on the memories I have of my childhood. Well that, or some decent material I can use to mock it. Here we go again.

I don’t what it is that compelled me to help reorganize the game room on Saturday morning. (Although, it’s my best guess that the TV was controlled by the women of the household, and TLC would rule the day.) For those who haven’t been to the house, we have a room that connects the garage to the rest of the house that used to be the frequent locale of time wasting during my youth. Aside from being Old School Nintendo HQ, we kept the ping pong table and dart board in there, as well as two full shelves of board games. Hence the name “game room.” (It should be noted it has been often referred to as its alternate name “play room,” but for the life of me I cannot recall ever staging a production of Julius Caesar in that room.)

In reorganizing the board games, I had the following set of thoughts. I thought that now I’m some 15 years removed from playing most of them, it’s time to look back and see just what warped version of competition I was spending my time engaged in…

Retrospective Board Game Epiphany #1: Not all games are designed fair. Even before we get to board games, there are two games that I played as a kid that require ZERO skill, strategy, luck, tactic, or knowledge. The first is Tic-Tac-Toe. If you go second in Tic-Tac-Toe, and therefore are playing with Team O, you will end up with a maximum of four squares in a 3 x 3 grid carrying your circular team banner. And the goal is to line up three of your mark in a row. Therefore, 75% of your O’s need to line up to win. That’s freaking impossible, considering you don’t get to go first. Why have we played this game for generations and generations? Why didn’t better simple games come and wipe this sham off the map? With all respect to Peter Angelos, let’s face it. The O’s suck. Connect Four took the idea and made it way better. And what about the card game War? I used to play this for hours, trying to take the rest of the deck from my sister. Now what skill was I applying to my victories? Let’s see. There was the ever-important “not dropping my cards on the floor” and the also-needed “being timely about picking up cards I’ve won.” After that, it’s pure luck. Pure luck of the cards you were dealt forty minutes ago. And yet, we used the name “War” for this mind numbing game. Couldn’t we have saved that name for a card game that involved winging cards at each other’s head? Now that, my friends, would require some real skill.

Retrospective Board Game Epiphany #2: Not all board games are good board games. My parents liked to get us board games for holidays, and with good reason – we played a ton of them growing up. Dice, chance cards, fake money – no matter what, it held our attention – almost. At some point you had to figure that we would receive a game that was a dud. After all, if my parents were 100% successful at picking good board games, they could leave their jobs and take over product development over at Parker Brothers. So looking back, we can afford a flop here or there. That flop?

The Game of the States

You could tell how much we played these games as kids by looking at how much duct tape has been applied to keep their boxes in tact. Games like Clue and Monopoly and Scattergories are almost entirely metallic silver by now. The Game of the States would earn a mint condition rating on eBay. This game should have been right up my dorky little alley. It involved money, geography, and dice-rolling. And yet, it just never held my attention. I guess if it had, I wouldn’t be a financial analyst. I’d be a commercial truck driver.

Retrospective Board Game Epiphany #3: My sister had no chance. Yep, looking back at the configurations and old score cards on these games, one thing became quite clear. I often used my 3 years of extra existence to my advantage. Example #1: The game was Guess Who? At some point, I alphabetized the game boards, so that they were identical. I also would make it clear that I was knocking down the picture of the guy I had, and she would do the same to keep up. And thereby reveal exactly who she had. Example #2: Battleship. I used to keep my fleet adjacent (I’m a Jasen!) to one another so that even if she found five consecutive hits, that wouldn’t necessarily sink a ship. Drove her crazy.

Retrospective Board Game Epiphany #4: It promotes the legalization of gambling. You want proof? This is taken from the rules of “The Game of Life:” If a player felt like he was trailing severely at the point he retired, he could make one final gamble in an attempt to become the "Millionaire Tycoon". He selected one number on the number strip, and placed his car here. He spun the wheel; if the number was anything but the one he selected, he was banished to the "Bankrupt" space and lost the game. If, however, he landed on the number he previously chose, he became the Millionaire Tycoon and automatically won the game.

Let that be a lesson, kids. You can work hard all your life and be happy, but a slacker with a lotto ticket may be the one waving to you from his yacht.