Game times: Board games continue to tantalize the masses

Monday, July 30, 2001 | 8:22 a.m.

Oh, the games people play.

War games, race games, career games, word games, tile games, card games, social games, math games and countless other games have been part of every society since groups of people first had a little time on their hand with nothing to do.

Monopoly, Scrabble, Clue, Battlestar Galactica, Batman Forever and thousands of other board games have been set up in parlors over generations.

Most people have their favorites from their youth, whether it be Pit, Clue, Peter Pan, the Game of Life, Sorry!, Pippi Longstocking or one of thousands of others.

Some have their favorite adult games: Talk Dirty to Me, PassOut, Romantic Sensations, Wheel of Intoxication and Adult Trivia, to name a few possibilities.

A few board games seem to have been around forever, such as chess (more than 4,000 years old) and Mancala, a game popular in Africa that could be as old or older than chess.

Other games have a very short shelf life, such as the A-Team, a 1984 creation by Parker Brothers based on the television series of the same name. It was only popular for the duration of the show (which was canceled in 1987).

Several county recreation departments sponsor board game nights, where enthusiasts can play Scrabble, mahjongg and other games. Sunrise Recreation Center near Nellis Air Force Base has daily tournaments for children.

"Some of the more popular games they play here are Mancala, Guess Who, Connect Four, checkers, Trouble, Sorry! and Monopoly," Tamara Trowell, a recreation specialist at Sunrise Recreation Center, said.

The current hot board game in Las Vegas is Cranium, according to one local game store executive who asked not to be identified. The object of the game is to move around a board by successfully completing activities described on the cards. The team with the best combination of skills wins the game.

Cranium was created two years ago by former Microsoft executives Richard Tait and Whit Alexander. It has been a local big seller since it arrived on the scene two years ago, the game store executive said.

Monopoly also still does well in Las Vegas even the themed sets, and especially the Las Vegas version.

Sy Epstein, president of the Association of Game and Puzzle Collectors, says Monopoly is the biggest-selling board game of all time.

"I like Monopoly and Star Reporter," Epstein said during a telephone interview. "Star Reporter has been around since the '30s. It first came out with the name Bo Carter, Star Reporter, but over the years it just became the generic Star Reporter. Players go after news stories."

Epstein, a resident of Silverspring, Md., has a collection of about 1,500 board games. He says many people have many thousands of games.

"A lot of them I've never heard of," he said.

New technology

One of the biggest challenges today facing old board games is new technology.

Micah Kotch is a marketing executive for Unplugged Games, a New York City company on the cutting edge of the latest game technology.

The company was founded a year ago to produce games that are played over the Internet on cellular telephones.

"It's a relatively new technology," Kotch said. "We have deals with 80 percent of the wireless (telephone) companies, including AT&T Wireless, Sprint PCS, ALLTEL and Verizon Wireless."

Among the games created by Unplugged are Void Raider and Rags2Riches.

Customers who have cell phones can use new technology to go online and play one of Unplugged's games.

"Void Raider is played an average of between 35 and 80 minutes per week per customer," Kotch said.

While the cell phones may be fun for games, they still are communication devices.

"Add the two together and you have a compelling argument for (phone) carriers to wire games (into their service)," Kotch said.

Ancient technology

In terms of age, games such as Monopoly don't hold a candle to some board games that are still around after thousands of years.

"One of the oldest known board games is Nine Men Morris, which is based on the principle of tic-tac-toe," Kevin Moroney said. "It's about 3,000 years old."

Moroney designs games for Unplugged, but is a fountain of information about user-friendly board games. He keeps tabs on current trends as well as old games.

The New York City resident said he became an avid collector of board games about 10 years ago. He has about 250 games.

Perhaps as old as Nine Men Morris is Mancala, which has hundreds of variations and is found on almost every continent. It is especially popular in Africa and Southeast Asia.

Moroney said Mancala is the cheapest board game in the world.

"African tribesmen just punch depressions into the dirt and they have a board and they use a handful of pebbles (as playing pieces)," he said.

Stone Mancala boards have been found carved into the roofs of Egyptian temples dating from before 1400 B.C. Three Men Morris boards, although probably not called that at the time, also have been found carved into Egyptian temples that date back to the same period.

A board game similar to checkers was discovered in the ruins of the ancient city of Ur, which is in Iraq, according to the Online Guide to Traditional Board Games. The game was dated at about 3000 B.C.

Checkers as we know it today has been around since 1400 B.C. In Egypt it was called Alquerque.

Chess originated in Persia or India about 4,000 years ago and backgammon, originally called Tabula or Tables during the Roman empire, had its beginning around the 1st century A.D.

The game of Go was also invented in China about 4,000 years ago.

Parcheesi is the national game of India and is believed to be about 2,000 years old. The game Sorry!, first produced in England, is a modification of Parcheesi.

Modern old games

While many people today seem obsessed with electronic games, even some computer geeks still like the old-fashioned board games.

"When I was 3 or 4 I played Candyland," Moroney said. "Everyone plays Candyland. I also liked Careers, which is out of print now."

But Monopoly is still the big man on the board.

"Monopoly, just plain-vanilla Monopoly, is still the most popular of the board games," he said. "A half-million to a million games are sold every year.

"With Monopoly, the reason it's so popular is because it has been so popular for about 70 years. Two or three generations have grown up with Monopoly in their house."

Moroney said the last major board game to make a splash in this country was Trivial Pursuit.

"It's still fairly popular," he said. "The company publishes new card sets all the time, but it is certainly not the phenomenon it was in the early '80s when it first came out."

Moroney said the popular Cranium "is not a great game, but it's fun. It's a combination of trivia and little brain challenges."

Moroney analyzed what makes a good board game.

"I look for a combination of high player interaction, all players involved in what all the others are doing. There needs to be intellectual challenge, a fair amount of thinking," he said.

"And this may sound so banal, but it has to be fun. It just makes you feel like you are having an entertaining social experience."

New games

The United States once dominated the board-game market, but Moroney said, "The most exciting work now is being done in Germany. The Settlers of Cataan is very popular."

The Settlers of Cataan was created in the mid-'90s in Germany by Klaus Teuber. It is distributed in America by Mayfair Games.

"It's a board game played by up to six players who build settlements on an uncharted island. It's very simple, but there is a fair amount of depth and a tremendous amount of player interaction."

USA Today recently reported that the game Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, made by Pressman and based on the TV game show, is the second-hottest selling came in the United States, behind Cranium.

But the Mattel game Survivor, based on the hit CBS reality show, is not surviving too well.

Perhaps it is destined to gather dust on the closet shelf next to The A-Team.

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