5 Old Games, 5 New Versions
‘Tis the season…for gift-giving. And while I’ve hit the age where a pack of socks is a legitimately cherished present, there still remains hope for younger folks about receiving fun stuff like games and toys. There has also been a resurgence of some of these from the ‘80s and ‘90s being brought back by the originally companies or through nostalgic Kickstarter projects. Fireball Island, Boglins, Roblox, and more represent a new wave of familiar items.
But nostalgia can only go so far. However, many of those games of yesteryear had pretty cool mechanics or other aspects that could be repurposed for something new that speaks to fans of the original plus those interested in either newer properties or a completely original new version. Here are five old games that should be revamped…and hopefully available by Holiday Season next year!
DREAM PHONE
If there’s one thing ‘90s games love, it was bright as fuck colors. If there were two things ‘90s games loved it was bright as fuck colors and some sort of peripheral mechanism. Mall Madness and Dream Phone and more all had this electronic hub that would help guide the game (before it would inevitably break forever). In Dream Phone’s case, players would get calls with clues to help them find their crushes, and then celebrate their discovery by calling the crush directly. …it was a simpler time.
So right out of the gate, there’s the issue that it relies on a pretty outdated version of communication. We still have phones but if you want the youth of today to get into it, it’s gotta be some sleek product perfect for making TikToks or taking dick pics. BUT…what if that older element was intentionally part of the design? It can be a throwback to a specific era or even tie-in with a certain property.
SCREAM is coming back to theaters soon and that was all about landlines (though cell phones loomed over the whole affair like a tsunami of plot contrivances).
When it comes to throwbacks to a bygone era, Stranger Things is always there to have someone call from the Upside Down or the shadow government to warn about some impending doom.
You could record messages and then use them to re-enact Lynch’s LOST HIGHWAY, or some sort of time travel storyline, or even have an animatronic tongue jut out while informing the listener that Freddy’s “your boyfriend now, Nancy.” (I feel like the grossness of that moment is always quietly brushed aside) In any case, you can use the retro nature of the phone to fit into a storyline sent in the past, or it can be the connection to the past, or could even be one of those stories where someone overhears a murder plot on the telephone and then shit gets crazy. Time to reach out and touch somebody!
GUESS WHO?
My main issue with Guess Who? was that it could never live up to its bombass commercials. In them, the cards would talk and such. I’m sure that could be remedied nowadays, but we’re not looking to break the bank next Holiday season. Still, a game of elimination and identify specific characters opens up for lots of possibilities while training kids how to be narcs and rats.
To be honest, this one seems like a layup. You could have all manner of type of people you’re trying to find. Maybe it’s some QAnon prick, or an anonymous internet commenter to whom you wish to dole out some punishment. It can also work with a whole host of intellectual properties if so desired. Where is Bob now in the Twin Peaks tie-in version as he goes from host to host? Just imagine the reds, blacks, and whites of the design.
Or climb through the various psychosexual maladies of all sorts of creeps in the Giallo-inspired version. That one can have an added game mechanism where suspects are randomly killed in gruesome fashion.
Of course there’s the paranoia of identifying who among a crowd has been replaced in such well-known titles as THE THING or INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS.
You could try to track down which crew member is infected with the ALIEN after an encounter with a facehugger. Or, for funsies, have a Frank Henenlotter tribute version where everyone is horribly, hilariously, tragically, and bizarrely deformed to make the descriptions even harder to parse.
OPERATION
I feel like Operation is most famous for its old school versions in which players would get really shocked by touching the sides. It also was a game where the puntastic pieces would just get lodged inside the “patient” and never seen again. Apparently it’s still around but they just sub in different people for the patient. One of them is Shrek. Which is….really….neat. I guess.
The mechanic of having to carefully retrieve and dismantle something is actually pretty clever…but maybe not for a goofy surgery game. Now a bomb diffusing game? Yeah, that’s the stuff. I’m sure people wouldn’t be thrilled at the idea and there’d be boycotts…but there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Plus let’s be honest, it’ll mostly be the Oregon Trail generation and older that will buy it.
Take a page from works like1996’s THE ROCK, DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE, MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, SPEED, or, hell, even MACGRUBER. As you have to remove each piece in order with only X number of wrong moves before it explodes.
You want to combine it all? Have the bomb be inside of a person (THE DARK KNIGHT-style), and if there’s a failure it blows up using a similar mechanism as in the board game Perfection.
There are all sort of scenarios in which characters must very carefully place or remove something or else calamity befalls them. Use those ideas instead of surgery on a bunch of bad jokes.
And if you MUST do a surgery game without a bomb, have you considered the works of the Family Cronenberg? Suddenly the body horror genre finds itself in the realm of board games as machine and bio-organic weirdness has to be moved around and removed to assemble something else. Add in that the pieces can move or something terrifying like that, and you’ve got a recipe for an incredibly freaky family game night courtesy of Canada.
MOUSETRAP
Oh Mousetrap; what a shit game. It takes an hour to set everything up and then like one minute for all the contraptions to go off and probably 85% of the time it never worked at all. That basket wouldn’t fall or would topple over sideways. It was like warning ‘90s kids about bachelor’s degrees: lot of work and you’ll get it all together, but it still won’t mean a damn thing in the end.
There are actually so many precedents for other Rube Goldberg set-ups that capturing a mouse legitimately seems like the lowest hanging fruit. You could’ve had Pee-Wee’s breakfast machine, or something that performs some sort of activity that’s not just having a fireman randomly appear to make a basket plummet. Also is that the same kid in the Mouse Trap commercial that’s in the Operation commercial?
Weird.
So there are all sorts of alternative convoluted processes that can be built and exploited. But if you’re looking for inspiration, why not something from the SAW series? Or the FINAL DESTINATION movies? Players set up intricate traps that are certain to punish their captives and/or are the invisible hand of death that takes out those who’ve cheated the grim reaper.
Too literal an interpretation? Then entire the unnecessarily overcomplicated world of a Christopher Nolan movie. Construct various pieces of a machine as a narrative unfolds, one that seems cool but is ultimately just a shrug.
Including different pieces to build different machines would allow for a bunch of bonkers permutations while still trying to solve that puzzle and achieve a goal you won’t know until far into the game.
IT FROM THE PIT
It From The Pit is a pretty simple concept that feels like someone just automated a Hungry, Hungry Hippo and then gave it vertigo. While the commercial promised non-stop action from a beast born out of the primordial swamp, it was essentially just a claw game where you and the other players were the left over Pikachu dolls waiting to be scooped up.
Admittedly, this one is limited. Basically, the game calls for something to snatch someone and drag them under. There’s some fun pop culture inspiration in the form of Sam Raimi’s DRAG ME TO HELL, with a demon dragging the cursed down to the underworld. Or maybe the shai hulud (sandworms) from DUNE can emerge to swallow hole those that trespass on its desert planet (make bank selling the 1984 David Lynch variant!).
Or it could even be The Blob could be the culprit grabbing various players’ pieces. That would have the added bonus of incorporating the ‘80s and ‘90s toy mainstay of slime that you could have the monster exude.
Another possibility is that it could just be some random figures. Maybe the more random the better. An oddly sinister beckoning cat (or maneki-neko) that scoops up the unlucky. Or the ghost of Jim Nabors. I dunno—get weird with it.
But if you want a true monster that will make players feel extra smart…have you considered capitalism?
It can be under the umbrella of 2019’s PARASITE, but it would be a monstrous creature that sucks people into its maw and forever taints them.
And players will never stop smugly pointing out the irony of the metaphor of the game being delivered by a piece of merchandise. Take that, inherently inequitable financial system and societal construct!