(#9) A Juvenile American Game!!!

So doing research for this blog has been so much fun and I was looking around trying to find another game to talk about and I ran across a game called “Uncle Wiggily Game”. The reason why this game touches so close to home is because it is based off of a children’s book. My dad has worked in children’s books for almost thirty years so I thought of him right away. This is a track board game based on a character in a series of children’s books Howard Roger Garis. A track board game is where you want to be the first one around the board. The game is of the “racing” variety in the style of the European “Goose Game”. Players advance along the track from Uncle Wiggily’s Bungalow to Dr. Possum’s House. There is no strategy involved as play entirely rests upon a random drawing of the cards. The game was first published by Milton Bradley in 1916 and has seen several editions Milton Bradley modified the game in 1923, 1949, and 1955. In 1947, the game cost $.67 after its last update. These updates that the game received were nothing major, just some art changes and other little things. No game play changes have been made since the game’s release.  Uncle Wiggily’s remains one of the first and favorite games of childhood, and, with Candy Land, is considered a classic juvenile American board game. This meaning that is your classic fun game for kids.

The number of spaces on the track, the number of decks of cards, and the number of cards has all changed through the years with the various editions being published. The game board has been illustrated several times. The counters have been produced in both painted wood and colored plastic figurines of Uncle Wiggly. The board game in the 50’s had six painted metal (probably zinc) counters.

“Uncle Wiggily.” BoardGameGeek, boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/3074/uncle-wiggily.

“Uncle Wiggily: History of a Gentlemanly Bunny.” The Game Aisle, 10 Nov. 2016, http://www.thegameaisle.com/uncle-wiggily/.

(#8) Chess Champion turns game maker!!!

 

            Going from Sorry to Lasca, you’re probably thinking what the hell is Lasca and why will people care about this. The reason I want to write about this game is because of whom it was created by. World Chess Champion, Emmanuel Lasker in 1911, created Lasca. The game Lasca comes from the American game of Checkers and the Russian game of Bashni also known as Towers. Now lets talk a little about how you play the game. The game is played on a 7×7 board; as with Checkers and most games like this, play takes place on only certain squares, only 25 of the 49 squares on the game board are actually being used. The playing pieces are known initially as soldiers; when they reach the last row of the board, they become officers, with the same ability as kings in Checkers to move and jump backwards. The game continues until either a player can’t move or a player has no pieces remaining on the board. In both cases, this player loses the game.

So that’s the basic logistics of the game, now lets get into why this game is so amazing, this game was made by a professional gamer at the time you did not see this that often back then. The Parker Brothers did not play games for a living; they were considered businessmen at the time. This guy was not your typical suit, as people would put it. He played chess for living. Now a days with EA sports playing games professionally is a lot more common and usually the best players in the world end up working for the gaming company that makes that specific game.

 

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/6862/laska

“Lasca.org.” Lascaorg, http://www.lasca.org/.

(#7) Sorry!!!

 

Growing up as a kid I played a lot of different board games and one of my personal favorites to do this day is Sorry!. It is a 4-player game filled with twists and turns and great for a group of friends and your family. The earliest variation of today’s Sorry! did not come from Hasbro or the Parker Brothers it comes from  England. It came from a man named William Henry Storey of Southend-On-Sea filed. Sorry! was first registered as a trademark on May 21st 1929. There were patents that followed the original but the games final home was with the Parker Brothers in 1934 when they adapted the game. Hasbro now publishes it, as they purchased Parker Brothers in 1991. Sorry! Is a board game that is based on the ancient cross and circle game Parcheesi. Players try to travel around the board with their pieces faster than any other player. Originally manufactured by W.H. Storey & Co in England and now by Hasbro, Sorry! Is marketed for two to four players, ages six through adult. The game title comes from the many ways in which a player can negate the progress of another, while issuing an apologetic and sarcastic “Sorry!”

What makes this game so popular is it, it is a perfect game for families to play together, they can play it with kids and everyone can have a good time. People also like being familiar with a certain genre of games and being that Parcheesi was so popular people felt better playing Sorry!.

“Pin Design.” Sorry! – Online-Multiplayer-Boardgame, sorry.eeimer.de/.

“Sorry!” BoardGameGeek, boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/2407/sorry.

(#6) Cross Country Tour!!!

 

In the early 1900s the Parker Brothers found a lot of success in card games and made their way doing that until they came across a game called Touring in 1906. This game was originally published by the Wallie Dorr Company. The Parker Brothers picked up the game in 1925. The idea of this game is not very complex and was never very popular but it was a different kind of game. Touring is a simple game of trying to complete a cross-country car trip by playing mileage cards, but it has a notable aspect: you can play disasters like “broken spring” and “populated area” on your opponents to slow down their journey. As such it was perhaps the first “take that” game — a very American style of gameplay where players actively attack each other, usually by playing cards from their hands. Through the success of Innocence Abroad, their various variety of games, Parker Brothers rose in prominence until it eclipsed McLaughlin Brothers in the early 1900s as the premier American gaming company. McLaughlin Brothers would entirely disappear in 1920 when Milton Bradley purchased its gaming assets.

This was the first game of it’s kind and it reminds of a sort of modern day Oregon trail where the goal is to get across country in the least amount of bumps and bruises. This game did not seem very popular at the time. I think part of the reason is because going out west had died down a little a bit and most people did not want to remember their journeys.

“Board Game History: The American Board Gaming Century Begins.” Mechanics & Meeples, 18 Mar. 2014, http://www.mechanics-and-meeples.com/2013/04/01/board-game-history-the-american-board-gaming-century-begins/.

Mortensen, Eric. “Touring Card Game Review and Rules.” Geeky Hobbies, 31 May 2016, http://www.geekyhobbies.com/touring-card-game-review-and-rules/.

 

 

 

(#5) Steeplechasing!!!

Steeple chasing is a sport that has been around since the 1860s and has been an Olympic sport since 1968 and is still very popular. For some people sports are not there thing and they want another way to enjoy the activity. In 1899 the McLaughlin Brothers invented a board game called Derby Steeple Chase. To play the game you are required to roll the dice and in doing so try to avoid any all hazards that may come along. The first player to cross the finish line is of course the winner of the game.

This game was made way back in 1899 and really cannot be found anywhere but do the power of the internet the game is still able to played to do this day. There is an online version that is two players and you click to spin to see how many spaces you go around the board. It is an exact replica of the game from 1899. To play Derby Steeple Chase click on the link, it is a really cool to be able to experience games that were made for people 100 years ago today it makes me feel like I am actually part of the time period.

During this time period Thomas Hitchcock was the face of Steeple Chase he is considered the father of the sport from all his accomplishments. It was thanks to the training center he built in the late 1800s to really get the sport off the ground. This was in perfect timing with the game coming out right with the turn of the century.

“Derby Steeple Chase.” BoardGameGeek, boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/65176/derby-steeple-chase.

http://www.museumofplay.org/web-games/steeple-chase/.%20It%20is.

(#4) Battle of the Ivy Leagues!!!

Board games is in my top 5 favorite hobbies but other things on that list is sports and the fact that I get to talk about a sports board game makes me even more excited to talk about this next game. This next game is simply called the Yale – Harvard Game. Most people only know Yale and Harvard for being top Ivy League schools, which they are. But they also have a pretty big football rivalry as well. As the Parker Brothers are great at. They know how to make a game perfect for what is going on in the world at that time.

This game is about football, the game is played with a board this charted out to look like a football field and you use dice rolls to determine certain aspects of the game play. Up above the post there will be an image fully describing the game. You can also check out Board Game Geek. The first Yale v Harvard Football game took place on November 13th 1875, this game came out in 1894 about 20 years after their first meeting. At the time there was no real way to emulate sports for people who did not have the opportunity to play at the highest level. This game is for the fans who want to reenact the rivalry with their favorite team. Maybe there is a Harvard fan who does not like the fact that Yale leads the all time series 66-59-8 and they want to rewrite their own history. That is what these sports games can do.

“The Yale-Harvard Game.” BoardGameGeek, boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/14240/yale-harvard-game.

(#3) Ye Yankee Peddler!!!

Ye Yankee Peddler was made in 1888 by the Parker Brothers, for more information about them check out one of my earlier posts.  The reason why I want to write about this game is because of the time period of when it was made. It was made at the perfect time. After the Civil war ended in 1865 America entered a period called reconstruction.  Reconstruction is a time period where the government had to do a lot of things to fix America after the Civil War and after the slaves were freed.  Up above you will see an image with a total game description from Board Game Geek. 

The reason why this game is so important to the time because it talks about a new age of farming and how people have to now bid and compete for crops.  Now with slaves gone by 1888 not everyone can grow everything they want. Farmers just like in this game need to now be strategic in picking which crops they want.  This game also really speaks to what people were interested back then and what people really wanted to simulate doing. This was a time period before the industrial revolution. This is before all the big machines. People were still into farming and growing crops. The intended audience for this game was for children. It was a way for children to see how trading and crop management worked at a age. It is also one of the last major crop management games until 1995 and Settlers of Catan which I will do its own post about.

“Ye Peculiar Game of Ye Yankee Peddler.” BoardGameGeek, boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/214203/ye-peculiar-game-ye-yankee-peddler.

 

(#2) The Landlord Game!!!

It is now the beginning of the 20th century and our trip around the gameboard of history continues. By the early 1900s it has been 20 years since the first major board game companies have been founded and the industry is growing rapidly. When people talk about the one of the first American Board Game designers. The name Lizzie Maggie is the one often associated with it. She invented a game called The Landlord’s Game, which once is explained to you will sound very similar to a modern game known as monopoly. The game board consists of a couple of different kinds of places, there are 4 railroad squares, two utilities and a place that every time you passed it you gained 100 dollars. Maggie invented and patented the game in 1904. The game was designed to show how land grabbing worked and the cause and effect of it when people did purchase land.

The Land Lords game came out in 1904, just two years later a very popular card game came out in 1906 called Rook. Rook is something called a trick – taking game. That is a card or tile based game in which the game play of your “hand” is based around a series of rounds or units of played, called tricks. Each of these help determine the winner of the game. The game Rook is played with a standard deck of cards but where 1s,2s,3s and 4s are removed from the deck. It is a standard 4-person game. It is often referred to as the missionary poker.

“The Landlord’s Game.” BoardGameGeek, boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/29316/landlords-game.

“‘THE HISTORY OF THE LANDLORD’S GAME & MONOPOLY.’” “THE HISTORY OF THE LANDLORD’S GAME & MONOPOLY”, landlordsgame.info/.

Landlord – Real Estate Tycoon, a tycoon game where you buy property in your area and earn money based on how much you buy! from AndroidGaming

(#1) The Parker Brothers!!!

They are known as one of the heavyweights in board games today and they started way back in the mid 1850s. I am talking about the Parker Brothers. Their game design journey began when George Parker decided to redo a boring game called Everlasting. This game was made to teach moral lessons to young people. He decided he wanted to make the game more fun and less like a lecture you would hear from one of your parents. He added to new cards to the game and he also changed some of the rules, he eventually renamed the game Banking. Him, his brother and his friends enjoyed playing it so much he ended up making over 500 copies to sell to Boston area stores. This game turned him his first profit of nearly 80 dollars. This would be the first of 1800 games published by the two brothers and their company.

By 1887, George Parker had hired his first employee and rented a store in Salem Massachusetts. A year later he would invited his brother Charles to join him in his business and then nearly 10 years later he would invite his younger brother Edward. After Charles joined he soon started to persuade his brother to start manufacturing games under the Parker Brothers title. They opened up a manufactory along with their store. Some of the earliest titles to come out included names like Ye Yankee Peddler, Billy Bumps Goes to Boston and the Yale – Harvard Game. To learn more about Ye Yankee Peddler and Yale – Harvard Game click on the links. The company began to innovate and grow from there.

“Parker Brothers.” Board Game Publisher | BoardGameGeek, boardgamegeek.com/boardgamepublisher/28/parker-brothers.

http://www.bing.com/cr?IG=25390F3F7B2C4317930BC7C5D7FD2E64&CID=292E2CA59586618B29DB27FD942960B3&rd=1&h=cwy5zbIOk0fisi93TSYHos7bH0MTjzSwIAC9R6VsSvs&v=1&r=http%3a%2f%2fwww.parkerbrothersconcepts.com%2f&p=DevEx,5066.1.

 

Let the games begin!!! (Intro)

Board Games have been popular for a very long time inside and outside of the United States. It really took hold in America starting in the late 19th century. Although the people and companies who made these games are not known today they started a culture that is still being lived in today. The first industry leader in board games was the McLaughlin Brothers. They were tops by the early 1880s. The general public does not play games today but to collectors the games are almost priceless. There was another group during this time that primarily focused on education at the time but ended up producing one of the most well known games of all time in The Checkered Game of Life. Another example of an early board game came from a different company, Parcheesi as it’s referred to today made by Milton Bradley in the early 1880s. In 1887 another company took the spotlight and came out with their first game. This game was call “The Mansion of Happiness” it was originally made by a different company but after a merger, the game was republished in 1894. The Mansion of Happiness is a game where you go around a spiral track board trying to be the first one to reach “The Mansion of Happiness”. The game is based around the Puritan view of the world. Even game mechanics were influenced by the Puritan view. A spinner or a top-like teetotum, for instance was used in children’s board games rather than dice this was to show the association between Satan and gambling. They labeled it “the first board game ever published in America” This statement was not totally true, but it was the first wide selling and widely available game in American history. The board game community was slowing growing in America, it would take till the 1900s for American Board Gaming to really catch on.