There’s nothing like a little ‘friendly’ competitiveness when it comes to board games! I have many 'fond' memories of caravan holidays, pretending to be the Waltons family… huddled around a poxy folding table and knocking out a game of Connect 4! I mean, what else are you to do when it’s the Great British summer and it’s pissing rain?! Board games were a staple in my childhood throughout the 80s and 90s. And even now there's a resurgence! People have jumped on the nostalgia of playing classic board games with iconic TV shows or films we all loved from yesteryear.
Oooohhh sparkly retro-tastic memories! Check them out here!
Now throw a little alcohol in the mix and you’ve got yourself a perfect night in! With a little throwback to those ‘fun’ times when tables were overturned in game rage, dead legs and Chinese burns were inflicted by older siblings just because you were winning… I've compiled a list of the top 13 classic board games that are timeless. Unlike me, myself and copious amounts of grey hairs!
Scrabble
The word game that will usually make you look like a fecking illiterate idiot if you’re not careful! You lost me at double and triple scores because I generally couldn’t care for your nonsensical words. I acknowledge your supreme status as a classic board game, but that doesn’t mean that I have to like you!
Yahtzee
I once attempted to play this game with a friend in a Norwegian café. Cool story bro! We didn’t know the rules so kind of guessed them. And then half way through the game we found another dice in the box that I’m fairly sure we needed at the beginning! I spent most of the time randomly shouting “YAHTZEE!” because it made me feel like I was somewhat invested in our made-up game!
Connect 4
This game is either really quick and fun or long and really boring. There is no in between! If you’re playing someone who is quite good at it, then the game will go on forever until you run out of counters, you’re hungry and have forgotten why you decided that it was a good idea to play in the first place! However, if you’re playing your 4-year-old nephew who just likes the colour red with zero concept of the game, then it’s always amusing beating a small child at a game!
Trivial Pursuit
This game is just a quiz and the board and pieces are just a wild ruse to make you feel like it’s entertaining. It’s not. This game always seemed like homework which was never any fun. “What bird is named after the Ugandan word for photosynthesis??” Ugh! Stop trying to make my brain learn new things!
Draughts/Checkers
Whichever variation you played of the games they both can be described as ‘definitely not chess.’ This traditional board game felt like chess for dummies, so naturally I quite enjoyed it! It made me feel sophisticated when the rules of chess flew right over my head.
Chess
This board game has to be mentioned despite the fact I never played it growing up because my brain melted when a friend tried to explain the rules to me. Of course, there has to be a reason this classic strategy board game has been kicking around for thousands of years, and still attracts lots of fans. I suppose.
Guess Who
Now you’re talking! This game provided hours of entertainment. Does she have ginger hair? Does he wear glasses? Does he look like that creepy politician who probably belongs on the sex offender register?? The variations to deduce your opponent’s person were simply endless!
Operation
This was another game that appealed to me. Picking out fiddly body parts from a naked dude with a bulbous red nose was super fun! The only problem was that the small fiddly parts meant that they always went missing so the game was never complete, and you had to substitute the funny bone with a bit of blu-tack!
Cluedo
When you grew up with the Spy File and Sunday afternoons watching Murder, She Wrote and Columbo, Cluedo was always a must-have board game. The rules were very simple: find out who dunnit… the murder weapon used and in which room. I always felt like a smug Poirot bastard announcing, “It was Miss Scarlet, with the lead pipe in the study!”
I loved it. You loved it. We all loved it!
Ghost Castle
This board game classic was always on my Christmas wish list to Santa, but I never got it! I did however spend a lot of time playing it at my friend’s house and soon realised that I was more excited about the cool model setup of a haunted castle rather than playing the actual game!
Mouse Trap
If you have an interactive game with moveable parts, then every kid is going to love it regardless of the rules! Mouse Trap was a cult classic in the board game world. It was bright and fun and looked like something Kevin in Home Alone would setup to piss off some burglars!
Screwball Scramble
The ultimate obstacle course that required skill rather than strategy. I loved this game! Granted, once you had figured out how to get the chrome ball through the course, the gameplay went dramatically downhill… BUT it was an awesome immersive game that deserves a nod in the memorable board game genre!
Monopoly
The 83-year-old board game that continues to have a bad reputation for tearing families apart! It is also known as a game that never actually ends. Nobody needs to be aggressively negotiating a hotel on the Old Kent Road for 4 hours of their life! Again, this iconic game was one I played with friends where we blatantly made up the rules because none of us had any idea about buying and trading property. And any 8-year-old who claims to know about resource management is a liar!