by Lowell Kempf
The other night, when Carrie and I went to a Pub Quiz night with some of our friends, I noticed that the bar it was being held at had a selection of board games for the customers to play. It’s certainly not the first time I’ve ever seen such a thing but this one struck me for having a decent selection and not one that looked too badly beat up.Piled up on a ledge were (deep breath) Scattagories, Taboo, Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots, Risk, Apples to Apples, Catch Phrase, Monopoly, Rummikub, Sequence, Scrabble, Parcheesi, Guess Who and Candy Land. Yes, I took notes :P
Yeah, every last one of those games is one you could buy at any given Walgreen, Target or any other big box store. It wasn’t a collection that was thrown together by a niche gamer or at least not with niche gamers in mind. Heck, I was surprised I didn’t see Connect 4 or Yahtzee in the pile, although I later saw someone put Connect 4 back :D
And some of the games were ones that I really had to question. Monopoly, particularly if any house rules were added, seems like it would take longer than any bar would really want a patron to be hogging a table, particularly if you wanted to be sober enough to count money. I really hope no children small enough to voluntarily play Candy Land are going to wander into a bar and I’m scared to think of how much you have to drink before playing Candy Land seems like a good idea.
Still, having Rummikub alone gave the collection extra points in my book. That’s a game you can buy in any given big box store that I will cheerfully play and, more than that, seems perfect for the bar and restaurant environment. (In fact, a couple days earlier, Carrie and I saw some little old ladies playing Rummikub at a restaurant)
For that matter, I also was happy to see Scrabble, Risk (even though it has the same time issues that Monopoly has), and Sequence. None of them is my bestest and most favorite game in the world but I do think they are solid games when you’re limited to the mass market. Heck, it’s a reminder that while I am solidly in the niche game/designer game camp, the mass market does have some decent options.
Oh and Rock 'Em Sock 'Em is just fun to see anywhere :P
We, of course, didn’t play any of the games. After all, we were there to play Pub Quiz. However, I found it comforting to know that games are out there in the wide and wild world :)