Board games

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Amber suggested I make a post about board games, so I've decided I might try just that. Anyone who remembers the 90s remembers that board games were a very large part of the millennial experience. Some of the games were just versions from previous decades, while others were brand new. I had a lot of board games growing up, and I still have quite a few. I even had some of my childhood board games. There were games I always wanted and never got, and then there were the ones that I got and loved or hated. I will probably just do a few for this post and post more as I remember them, because there were a lot of games I don't remember off the top of my head at the moment, but I still remember quite a few. I may even decide to post games that aren't from the 90s that I have enjoyed or found funny. I haven't yet decided how I'll do this, but stick with me as I figure it out. First up is one I've mentioned in a previous post in passing, but it wasn't its own post. Back in the 90s, I remember seeing the commercials for Don't Wake Daddy. I wanted this game so bad; I don't know why, but it appealed to me. I never got this game, even though I think it made an appearance on my Christmas list for several years; my mom probably thought it was ridiculous and decided to bypass it. I didn't get to play it as a child, but I one day became a parent, and unlike my mom, I decided this game was perfect for my then three-year-old board game-loving son. Not realizing what I was in for, I was super excited when I went to Toys R' Us (they closed maybe a few years after this) and saw this game from my childhood that I never got. I swear the angels smiled down on me as I grabbed this game that I never thought I would ever get to play. My son opened it up on his birthday (I was not waiting for his family party for this one; we were playing it now), and we immediately played this game. To say this game was a letdown is probably an understatement. My mom knew what she was doing; I obviously didn't. That game was not a gift from the heavens but from the other place. This game basically screamed abusive father, with a hint of the jump scare of perfection without the skill involved. You never knew when the dad would jump out of his bed and scare the ever-loving daylights out of you. If you love the suspense of a toaster randomly popping off this is the game for you. I swear I jumped every single time the dad jumped out of his bed. This is the reason I don't do haunted houses; I can't handle being startled. I'd end up punching someone in the face. I am not a suspense person. I hate toasters, I hate school fire alarms, and I hate the dad jumping out at me in Don't Wake Daddy. I can only thank my mother for having the good sense I didn't have and not getting that for me as a child. That said, we still own the game, and part of me now wants to play it again as spooky season approaches, because that is the game that belongs with spooky season. I mentioned it in Don't Wake Daddy, and I'll mention it now. Perfection. It may have come out before the 90s, but we had the commercials for it, and we played it. Who else can remember the commercial "Pop goes Perfection!" because it is seared into my mind. Unlike Don't Wake Daddy though, it was fun because there was skill involved and there was a timer. As the song says, you had to get the pieces into the slots before the timer was up, or "Pop goes Perfection!" It still made me jump, but at least I knew it was happening. I later also bought this game for my son, and we still have it. I liked that he could play it himself. He and his friend called it the jump scare game; clearly, my son had forgotten about the horror that was Don't Wake Daddy if he thought that was a jump scare game. Another one that I still own and is far less scary than the previous ones I mentioned was Mall Madness. This was a popular game at most sleepovers I went to. I still own mine. I've played it with my son on occasion. He thinks it's fun. You had to be the first to get a certain number of items on your little card and get back out to the parking lot. There was this little battery-operated thing that would tell you where sales were and where the clearance was. If you ran out of money, you had to take your credit card to the bank and get money. I remember racing to the stores with a sale and the little guy who voiced it going, "Eww, a long line, try again later" or "Sorry, we're out of stock, try again later" or "Your item will cost 5 dollars more". The sales would change after a couple of turns, so you had to hope you were near some of them. It was a fun game, and I was usually pretty good at it. The next game I'm sure most people remember is Operation because it originally came out in the 60s, but once again they aired the commercials for us millennials, and we ate it up. There was poor Cavity Sam lying there, allowing a bunch of kids who were barely coordinated, let alone the fact that not a single one of us had a medical degree, but we were still up for the challenge. You got a set of tweezers and had to get out tiny little pieces from Sam's body, and you had to do it without touching the little metal sides that would buzz when you touched them, and his nose would light up. A game I remember wanting but never getting, and never even got to play, is Crocodile Dentist, which, once again, I think my mom understood was not the game for me even though I swore it was. The goal was to take turns pressing down on a crocodile's tooth until the crocodile bit down on some poor kid's hand. I don't know why they were so into scaring children back in the day, but someone out there was making the big money off of terrifying small children. The last one for the day that I'll mention (I could probably continue on for another mile if I didn't stop now because there are a boatload of games and I could list so many more right off the top of my head) is Mouse Trap. The goal was to race around the board and collect cheese while constructing a Rube Goldberg device, even though as a kid we used to put the device together before playing instead of as we played. I can't even remember all of the rules to the game anymore, but I remember putting the trap together. I'll make another post with another list of games later. Trust me if you're thinking of a game, I'll probably eventually get to it unless it's so obscure I've never heard of it, and even then I know some relatively obscure ones.