5 Things: Board Games Without Instructions

When I was a kid I had a bunch of board games. A lot of them were from the 70's and a bunch of them didn't have any instructions. Here is a list of 5 games I had as a kid that I didn't know how to play.

1) Stop Thief (1979)



Man I really wanted to play Stop Thief. It was so kickass. Sorta like Clue but more complicated and it came with a computer! Unfortunately, the computer was the only one who knew where the bad guys were and we had no idea how to use the son of a bitch. We dragged this thing out, set it up and spent an hour messing with it at least every two weeks trying in vain to understand how to find the bad guys.

Now, before you call me stupid, realize I was 6 years old and this was 1982. Real handheld computers wouldn't be invented for at least another 30 years. It would be like giving a Tamagotchi to the Fonz. No matter cool you think you are, Fonz, that Tamagotchi would be lying dead on a shit-covered screen within the first day.





See, this is what I had to work with. Oh, I know what you're thinking. "Duh, push the button marked "CLUE" maybe?" Yeah, you know what happens when you hit that button? Either a nonsense message would pop up in the tiny quarter of a calculator screen just below the speaker, or it would make a noise that was supposed to tell you what to do. Like footsteps. Or a creaking door. Real helpful. Plus, what about all those other buttons? What the hell do they do? Of all the games I had that didn't have instructions, I wanted some for this bastard more than anything.



2) Merlin (1978)

According to the Internet, Merlin featured six games (and then it listed seven games, oddly): tic-tac-toe, music machine, echo, blackjack 13, magic square, and secret number. If you had asked me at age 6 what games Merlin featured, I would have told you, "Make Beeps and Light Dimly." Seriously, I don't know if you've noticed, but look at that picture for a minute. Go ahead. Now, looking at the 11 buttons in the middle of the machine, you tell me... how would you play blackjack with that? Yeah, that's what I figured. Someday when I build a time machine, I'm going to make a list of all the people I really hate, go back in time to when they were 6 years old and give them one of these without instructions. Take that, Hitler!

In the picture below, you can make out the menu buttons. Now, try and figure out how to start one of the five games besides blackjack. Good luck sleeping tonight.

3) Laser Attack (1978)

Put the words "laser" or "attack" on any game and 6-year-old-me wants to play it all night long, baby. Hell, put them on female body part names and later-this-evening-me wants to play it all night long. Laser vagina? Attack boobs? Sounds dangerous, but I'm down.

What was I talking about? Oh, yes. Laser Attack. Laser Attack had these super cool little plastic pieces that you stack on other super cool little plastic pieces for some reason and you put them somewhere on the board and this electronic thing in the middle would shoot lasers at them and then... then... no idea. I remember pulling this game out all the time and just staring at the game board, stacking and restacking the pieces, trying desperately to figure out what the hell I was supposed to be doing. Damn you, Laser Attack.



4) Jonathan Livingston Seagull (1973)

Imagine the fun of pretending to be Jonathan Livingston Seagull in an all-out bare-knuckles battle to the death with 1-3 close friends!

Now check out the game board and imagine the puzzled look on your face as you slowly put everything back in the box and hide it in the darkest recesses of your closet. Yes, I did actually own this game, although I have no idea why. I'm assuming it was handed down to me in my infancy by my stoner parents. I also owned most of KISS's albums when I was 5. My parents gave me strange things.





5) Crossbows and Catapults (1983)


Okay, I actually had the instructions for C&C. But...

Look at that picture and tell me you'd sit around reading instructions when you could already be busy blowing the crap out of knights and castle walls and shit with:

THIS BADASS CROSSBOW and...

...THIS MOTHERFUCKING CATAPULT!! Yeah I didn't think so. Did this game need rules? Hell, we didn't even settle for the plastic barbarians that came with this game, we set up armies of G.I. Joes and every other action figure we owned and smote them with a never ending hellfire barrage of brightly colored plastic discs. I can guarantee you, if I had C&C right now, I still wouldn't bother to read the instructions. I probably wouldn't even be posting this right now. Actually, I'd probably be homeless, sitting in an alley somewhere giving a battallion of M.U.S.C.L.E.s the smackdown with BONECRACKERER, my magical catapult of DOOOM.

[Pictures and help retrieving and reliving long abandoned childhood memories thanks to BoardGameGeek]