
It might not have set the world aflame, but it had its fans. Indeed, some of these fans are also fans of board games - as evidenced by a new Kickstarter campaign to get a Crysis board game off the ground.
Of course, any half-nude idiot will tell you that video games have a long history of being translated into board games - and the pioneer in that market was Milton "MB" Bradley. Here's a quick rundown of the company's more notable titles in an ideal listicle format - the journalistic equivalent of coughing on a piece of bread and trying to pass it off as a parma ham sandwich. Twang!!!
We did, however, ask for this Zaxxon board game for Christmas one year, having seen it in mother's Kays Catalogue. We never got it though, horrifically deprived as we were. However, with the benefit of maturity, we note that we probably didn't miss much.
"Your mission is to seek out the enemy base - and destroy it". Quell surprise?
This actually wasn't half bad - and works surprisingly well in board game form. What we do find distressing is that semi-realistic depiction of a frog emerging from the 'O' in the logo. Our minds cannot help but project forwards towards what that frog might resemble after disappearing beneath the wheels of a truck.
This was similar in some respects to Frogger - except with the cars replaced by ghosts, and the left-right road replaced by a maze. Obviously.
What was neat, however, was Pac-Man himself - represented in the game by a giant fanged version of the character. Also, the box artwork portrayed the yellow menace as a sort of ghost-terrorising, blank-eyed horror, and the ghosts as cute, trembling, sweating, innocents.
We shall dub them Pompey and Frond. Good, strong, Italian names.
Somewhat less aesthetically compelling than other MB video game board games, The Legend of Zelda featured a tatty, and half-arsed board depicting dungeons and forests, and... y'know. Whatever. Playing cards, and that.
You're not going to convince us that this is anywhere near as exciting as the video game version... however many exclamation points you throw at it.
FROM THE ARCHIVE: