So it looks like once the nights have started to draw in early once more later in the year (Yep this winter hasn't finished yet and I'm already looking forward to the next one) it looks like my board gaming will be taking me back to my early years, and sparking off a real nostalgia trip.
I've already mentioned that there will be a co-operative game by Matt Leacock based on Thunderbirds. People of my age grew up watching Gerry Anderson staples such as Thunderbirds, Joe 90, Captain Scarlett, Sting Ray, Space 1999 and less common Fireball XL5. But during my youth which you got to see and when all depended on the ITV area you were in. Luckily for me on my little tv in my bedroom I could pick up three different ITV regions, Anglia, Central and Yorkshire, by fiddling with my tv's aerial.
During my teenage years in the 80s as I was discovering computers and living through the home micro boom it was Terrahawks, with the late great Windsor Davies (I think he's dead) doing the voice of the sergeant “robot” ball. Who of a similar age could forget the Blue Peter Tracey Island? The Blue Peter solution for those that could not get their hands on at the time one of the hottest toys of the day a Tracey Island.
Sadly for some kids their introduction to Thunderbirds was through the dire live action movie. Which basically should of constituted an act of war by Hollywood upon the world, and a crime against cinema. It should of been a puppet movie like the original. The creators of South Park were so incensed with anger that they shot Team America using puppets and showed what could of been, although funnier and more adult orientated.
Wednesday Modiphius released mock ups of the Thunderbird craft that will be in the game. The holes are there to peg in heads or some representation of the Tracey family that are in that craft.
On Tuesday I backed a new kickstarter project which is the other half of the gaming experience that will take me back down memory lane. That kickstarter was for Ghostbusters the Boardgame. The project has easily reached its funding target, and now with just under a month left its now down to how many of the stretch goals will be unlocked. So far they have unlocked the first two stretch goals, and I would imagine well on the way to the third.
I remember playing the Commodore 64 game in 1984 published by Activision and programmed by David Crane (author of many classic video games from the 80s such as Pitfall, Little Computer People). I remember reading an interview I think in Retro Gamer with David Crane and he didn't have long to write the game, luckily he had been working on a game that he was able to use as the basis of the game that became Ghostbusters. Of course the stand out memory of the game has to be the Ghostbusters theme blasting out of the tv being produced by the SID chip of the Commodore 64. What the musicians of the day were able to do with the SID chip was amazing, I still listen to some of the tunes on my iPod from the likes of Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway. Anyway if Ghostbusters wasn't the first it was one of the first to use speech synthesis (I think it's a close call between Ghostbusters and Mission Impossible with its “another visitor, stay awhile stay forever”), but to hear it shout “Ghostbusters!” was just amazing. And still a very fond gaming memory from the time.
The 84 New Years Eve I remember being in our dining room with my brother and a family friends daughter playing video games. One of the games I remember playing during the evening was Revenge of the Mutant Camels (one of my all time favourite games, and I believe the first commercial game to use a turbo loader). But as the clock struck midnight we were playing Ghostbusters. If my aging memory serves me correctly my resolution was to be playing games.
Back to the up and coming boardgame. There are two versions of the box, and being a complete saddo I'm going for the deluxe foil embossed limited edition kickstarter exclusive one (picture below). Yes there are other rewards with this, but I just prefer this box to the regular one.
There is currently no game play videos up on the kickstarter page but from what I can glean of the page, this game is a co-operative board game similar to Zombicide. The use of map tiles, miniatures, missions, character cards that level up abilities as the player gets more experience. It comes across as a Ghostbusters Zombicide with tweaks to the game to theme it to Ghostbusters better.
From what I can tell instead of a draw deck to place ghosts on the board they use a dice. And when there is more than one ghost of the same type in a space, they combine to form a more powerful ghost.
I am looking forward to seeing the game play video. But if it is as I have said a Zombicide variant then I'm going to love this game. I love Zombicide.
Posted by me using my iPad and the Blogsy app