games - 3/3 - Retroland

Monopoly

Let’s face it - most of us are never going to be filthy rich. Most of us are never going to wheel and deal and build a gigantic real estate empire filled with hotels, railroads and entire city blocks. And yet, just about every person in the civilized world has an inkling into what it might feel like for there are few among us who have never spent a few hours feeling like a big shot.

Pogs

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There isn’t a child of the 90s that doesn’t remember the pog craze that swept the nation. But while most might assume that the game was nothing more than a fad, dreamed up by advertising executives who wanted every kid to collect an assortment of advertisements and movie-tie ins, the history of these little disc is far more colorful and extensive than one might suspect.

Mouse Trap

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Just one glimpse of the elaborate mechanism, known as a Rube Goldberg Machine, is enough to get any kid begging for their parents to buy them a Mouse Trap game. Granted, it is perhaps the most inefficient way ever concocted to catch a mouse, but that’s really beside the point (or maybe it actually is the point.) Regardless, kids have been enjoying this simple game for almost five decades and its popularity shows no sign of slowing.

Chutes Away

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The lives of the survivors are in your hands. Do you have what it takes – the ability to line up your crosshairs successfully and the timing necessary to drop your paratroopers at precisely the right moment and save the day – the pressure to keep your cool when lives are resting on your piloting skills? Chutes Away gave you a chance to be a hero – actually ten chances if you want to get technical about it – and see if you had the intestinal fortitude to emerge victorious.

Lie Detector

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For future gumshoes of the world, who needed a challenge greater than the iconic Clue game could provide, came the much more challenging detective game of the 60s – Lie Detector. Not only were up-and-coming sleuths faced with a staggering 24 suspects, rather than the six regulars that inhabited the competing game, but a real-life Official Mattel Lie Detector was included to put the screws on the suspected perpetrator.

Pencil Fighting

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As the Five-Finger Fillet of elementary school games, Pencil Fighting is perhaps one of the more destructive games found in classrooms and playgrounds everywhere. Readily accessible mechanical pencils as well as school rules have caused the once-popular game of pencil fighting to dwindle away into the memories of those who were active participants in the fights. Of course, at Retroland, we thrive on those memories. And so, today we reminisce about the lost art of the pencil fight.

Electric Football

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When it comes to throwing around a virtual pigskin, there are a plethora of electronic options available today that simulate the game of football right down to the minute details. The grunting players look remarkably similar to their real-world counterparts, the stadiums are replicated to the very last detail, and the gameplay options allow the gamer to do virtually anything that can be done in a real game. Prior to these technological advances, however, electronic football games of the past couldn't rely on realism as a selling point, but they made up for it with a healthy dose of sheer fun, and some of these games are still beloved to this day. Let's take a look at the formative years of football games and the quirky gameplay that forever etched them into our collective memory.