Vintage Game: Connect4 Advanced

Every now and then a game comes through the doors of Farlands Games that somehow manages to get everyone who sees it excited. This is one of them.

I have got to say that honestly I had never heard of this, that MB Games had “expanded” the game. Vintage may be a term not used much for games from 2002 (even though its still 10 years ago!), but this is a rarity. Only produced for a short time before disappearing from shelves, this is that rare to find that as of writing this, there is not even a BoardGameGeek.com entry for this.

The idea of the game is still to connect 4 of your coloured pieces in a row, but this game introduces a third dimension. You can connect 4 horizontally, vertically, and diagonal from base to top. This is a real brain bender of a game. The extra dimension is very hard to keep track of, and you might be setting a devious trap to get your opponent, only to be beaten by a very obvious line that you did not see.

Diagonal connect4 from bottom left to top right, yellow

Construction wise, this game is bad. Cheap plastic all around, but it seems strong enough to withstand some vigorous playing. Price wise, it would have been around £14.99 when released, but if you want this now, you will be paying nearly £30 now, due to its rarity. It does however pop up in charity shops and places like that. If you do see one, I would highly recommend that you pick it up, if only as piece of gaming history, as I don't think that this will be released again by MB.

There are wooden versions available from various manufacturers, under the name of 3D Connect4, but to me they don’t have the appeal of this set, because to be quite frank, this set looks cool.

This shall take pride of place in my collection, as a piece of history, and as a game to get out to lure people into advanced strategy games. Don’t be fooled by this being Connect4, this is different beast of a game entirely.