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.

Vintage Game: Guess Who!

In this series of posts, we are going to play old games and see if they stand up to the test of time.

Guess who was first released in Great Britain in 1979 by Milton Bradley (MB) games. It went to the US in 1982. It has taken a few design changes over the years, the 1987 version only included 5 women and 19 men, which was not rectified until the 2000 version which had a almost equal split. Star Wars, Marvel and Disney versions have all been released, as well as various travel editions, which had only 20 tiles to choose from.

Guess Who. Now I think that everybody at some point in time must have played this game, it is one of THOSE games. I remember having it as a child, and now I play it with the children that are around now (nephews, friends children etc.), but recently we got this out at a party with adults, and yes it went down a blast.

The idea of the game is to “guess who” the other player has drawn from a deck of cards. You get two game boards, each with 24 tiles with each of the characters faces on them. You take it in turns asking questions about the looks, and by the end you should have one tile left, which should be the identity of your opponents character. If it is, you win that round, and onto the next one. First to five wins.

Now I know that write up is most likely irrelevant, as most people know how to play this simple game. With children, it teaches them logic and how to formulate plans to achieve a goal in a very real sense, and I think that this game alone is worth a place in children’s game collections just because of that. With a group of adults however, the game changes. The once innocent questions of a child are replaced with some, lets say, more colourful questions. But that all adds to the fun of this game.

I have played this game just one on one, and whilst it was still good, I think that with a group of adults, team play is a must. How you go about this is up to you, and part of the fun working that out.

The game in this day and age I think is defiantly still relevant. As I mentioned above, as a children’s game it encourages the building of logic skills, to get to a unknown goal in a structured way. As a adult party game, it works great. Its simple, easy to teach and can have some very funny outcomes and banter associated with it. If your child has this game try it out again, you may be surprised. If your child does not have this in their collection, get it for the both of you.