Vintage Game: Blockbusters

A game based on the popular UK television show from the 80's. Adorned with a picture of Bob Holness in a blazing, and I must say very sharp white suit, what is this game actually like?

Made by Waddingtons and designed for three players. The white team has only one player, but has less spaces to travel across the board and goes first. Blue team has two people, and has to travel one more space. I think most people will know how this plays. You choose a letter, and have to answer a question where the answer begins with the letter you chose. Answer correctly, and a block of your colour goes on the board and you choose another letter. Link across the board and you win.

The game pieces are very nice in this game. You get a nice 3d blockbuster board, similer to the tv show. There are a lot of questions, and a nifty holder that blocks all the answers on the card apart from the one you need, so there is no need for a dedicated question master.

This can be played with two people, just one on each side quite easily. A variation that we played was rolling a d12 to select the question that you got from the card, as sometimes you can get a run of really easy questions, and a run of really hard questions if you just read from the cards.

The only main problem with this version is that most of the questions are very dated, and will give you a mind workout, sometimes you won't even be able to answer a question due to the dating. But none the less this is a fun game with some really difficult questions, but you will surpise yourself when you know the answers.

Vintage Game: Coppit!

The 1964 Spears Games version

Initially released in 1927 under the name Trap the Hat, the version pictured is the definitive version, Spears Games 1964 version, Coppit!

A really fun game, this can be played by just about everyone, from children to adults.

The idea is simple, you have 4 “hats”, which you can manoeuvre around the board with a dice roll. The circles are your base area, and the pink squares represent safe areas. You can have all 4 pieces in play, but you can only move one per turn. The aim of the game is to land on your opponents pieces, “copping” them, and then moving them back to you home base, where you keep them as points. Be careful, however as on the way back, you can be capped again by another player, and then become one of their points!

The pink squares are safe, you cannot be capped on these spaces.

Red has been "capped"! (on the left)

This is quite a random game, being based on a roll and move mechanism, but strategy does come into play as you can set traps to get closer to the other players, such as not moving far away from your own base to lure the opponent around closer to you.

With children this is a great game. Easy to understand, with lots of laughs all around. But I think this is another one of these games, that when coupled with 6 adults and a party, can produce hours of fun. Playing with two people is OK, its still fun, but when all 6 are at the table, this really is a chaotic game for all to enjoy.

The modern version of Coppit

It has been released a number of times since, and a new version can be obtained from Amazon at a reasonable price. One for the collection if you like fast and fun games that don’t last very long. A nice filler game, with just enough strategy even for the most seasoned war-gamer.

Rating: 7.5

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.