If you were a child of the late 70s or early 80s then you very well might have come across board games based upon arcade games. The likes of Berzerk, Defender, Frogger, Pac-Man Popeye and Zaxxon would allow you to play your arcade favorites in a way that only board games could do – which may or may not have translated the arcade action in a way you enjoyed. In fact, Centipede already received that honor as a part of Milton Bradley’s series.
Now, the current Atari (which is mainly Atari in name only at this point) has licensed out three of their classics to board game developer IDW Games to become board game titles. This presently includes Asteroids, Centipede and Missile Command. For the most part, the cover art on each box captures the action of the originals, touching on the Atari 2600 art while changing it up. Hopefully that means that the boards themselves will look great:
These three are slated for a release this Fall sometime with Centipede coming out first. If they prove successful then Atari will certainly bring more to the table. I won’t hold my breath for Major Havoc, I, Robot or Starship I though.
Geek & Sundry has a few more details including finding out from the designers what they hope to capture with these new games although specifics on how these games will play are under wraps for now.
What you do think? Do board versions of your favorite arcade classics appeal to you?
Love the artwork, I want the boxes for my game room! I wonder how big they are?
I think it’s great to see retro arcade coming back in so many ways. The Funko stuff is cool too, if you haven’t seen it.
https://youtu.be/MzkYCErxmJI
Don’t get how MegaMan got in there, but whatever, I played my fair share of that one too. Hoping for a v2 of these, but I’m running out of room!
Yeah, I loved the funko minis as well (except Mega Man…seems odd that a console character was in with a bunch of arcade guys, so I gave that one to my manager)
The rest are sitting on my shelf on top of the boxes (even bought an extra Frogger so I could have it for my computer desk in my bedroom)
Original Pacman by Milton Bradley (1980) is a crazy fun game with 4 players. Kind of like “Survivor”, you make alliances early on in the game to take out other players, only to then turn on each other at the very end. A lot of smack talk happens, especially when drinking. My friends never knew how much fun this could be compared to the video game.