Game On: Vintage Board Games Bring Back Childhood Memories

Grandma's linen closet housed more than dainty tea towels and perfectly folded guest sheets. It was the place where she tucked her ambitious 5,000 piece jig-saw puzzles and for her grandchildren, a fine selection of board games. Sorry, Parcheesi and Monopoly were among our favorites and provided hours of rolling, dealing and giggling, while Grandma worked her crosswords puzzles and guessed the words on Wheel of Fortune. Once my own children were old enough for games, I delighted in sharing some childhood favorites with them and was amazed at how something so simple could bring back such wonderful and powerful memories.

Vintage board games are a hot collectible item, even with most of the games available in updated versions at many discount retailers. Perhaps it's nostalgia or the little kid in all of us that gets giddy at the familiar sight of our beloved board games. Regardless of current availability, some oldies are just better than their contemporary counterparts, and board game suppliers rank high on the list of vintage collectibles worth hunting for. If you're looking to start, or add to, a board game collection, here are some tips to get the most for your money:

Surface Inspection

It's hard to imagine that a board game for children would have an intact box after years of use and storage, but vintage games were made with sturdier material than the games on shelves today. Depending on the age, some scuff marks are to be expected and some wear and tear around the corners of the box are common as well. Ripped, torn or water damaged boxes fetch a lower price, but it's still worth inspecting what's inside the box if it's a game you've been looking for!

Bits and Pieces

Opening up a board game is extremely important, and you should be leery of any seller that will not open a game that's been taped up upon request. Taking a peek inside is the only way to ensure the game has all its necessary components. Some games require you to be fairly knowledgeable about all the pieces needed to play, but some are easy enough to figure out on your own. If you're looking at a vintage Sorry game, for example, it's easy to see that all the colors require four of each to play the game. For the true treasure hunter, a game with missing pieces can still be an excellent buy as you just might find some stray pieces on future excursions. If it's a game you really want, you may want to take a chance on hunting down the missing pieces to complete the set.

Instructions or No?

Intact instructions with a board game can be the icing on the cake, however most game instructions can be found online quite easily. If you're collecting games for the joy of playing them with your children or grandchildren, instructions may not be necessary, but for the serious collector of vintage games, instructions that originally came with the game make the piece more valuable.

Whether you're on the hunt for a specific beloved board game from the archives of your childhood memories, or simply love the simplicity of this popular collectible, vintage board games are one hot item to keep your eye on.

Finding Game Manufacturers - Finding a Manufacturer For Your Game

Break Down The Parts You Need - If you need both plastic pieces and a cardboard game board, try comparing prices with those parts being made by separate board game manufacturers china and also with the parts being made by one company. There are many game manufacturers that can make all parts of a game, but sometimes you can save money by using a company that specializes in game boards and another that specializes in the plastic pieces.

Attend a Game Related Trade Show - There are quite a few trade shows that go on where game manufacturers and those looking to have their games made or marketed attend. Attending a show like this can give you a really good idea of what options are open to you. You can also get a chance to get a more close up picture of what type of company the manufacturer is. You can talk to them in person and ask questions.

Obtain Multiple Quotes - Make sure you obtain at least 3-5 different quotes before you decide on which company to work with. Then, work slowly up to larger order volumes. If you start out with a huge order without having built trust, you could end up with a lot of unusable product or stressful negotiations with the company that hasn't proven their quality or service yet.

Consider Using a Foreign Manufacturer - There are many choices for game manufacturers in the US but if you are mostly concerned with price and are looking to order a large volume, you might want to contact some overseas manufacturers and compare their prices and quality as well. Manufacturers in countries like India and China can offer low priced products, but then you need to factor in the cost of shipping and bank fees.

Power Grid Board Game Review

In Power Grid, a new power market has opened up and everything is up for grabs. Compete against other power suppliers as you work your way towards becoming the biggest power supplier in the land. Build power plants and control the market for raw materials such as garbage, oil, coal and uranium. Connect cities to your power grid before others do and become the greatest power magnate!

Power Grid is a strategy board game designed by Friedemann Friese and is a remake of the German board game Funkenschlag. Each player represents a power supply company trying to connect as many cities as possible to its power grid. To do so, you will have to build power plants to supply enough electricity to power your cities; own enough resources to run the power plants; and earn enough funds to connect the cities and buy the power plants and resources.

Each game of Power Grid is played on a board featuring a map of a region hungry for power. The base game comes with 2 maps: the USA and Germany. Each map shows the cities that can be connected to your power grid and the connection fees between the cities. For example, it is cheaper to connect Washington with nearby Philadelphia than it is to connect San Francisco to Seattle. The board also contains a grid showing the raw materials (coal, oil, garbage and uranium), how much is available and how much they cost.

There are 4 actions each round in your quest to power the most cities (the game ends when a player connects a certain number of cities, determined by the number of players). Firstly, players take turns to bid for power plants. These plants can be powered by materials such as oil, coal, garbage, uranium and wind. Each power plant also has different efficiencies (being able to power a different number of cities), but you pay for that efficiency by spending more to buy the more efficient power plants.

There is an order to the bidding process. The player with the most connected cities each round get to bid for power plants first. However, this is balanced by the fact that they will be the last to buy raw materials and connect cities. Buying raw materials involves grabbing coal, oil, garbage or uranium from the board at their current price. There is a raw materials market that changes depending on supply and demand. The materials replenish at a fixed rate each turn, and are consumed by players using the related power plants. The more of each material is available, the cheaper it is.

Connecting cities involves paying connection fees and placing your tokens on the connected cities. There are clusters of cities on each board where the connection fees are pretty cheap, but building in those areas means competing against more players who also want to take advantage of the cheap connections. Power Grid also divides the game into 3 phases: starting, growing and matured phases. Progressing from one phase to the next changes the amount of raw materials that are replenished each round, and also increases the number of players who can connect to each city.

The last action in the round is to power your cities. You use up the required raw materials and earn cash depending on how many cities you powered. You can then use this cash to buy more power plants and resources, and connect more cities the next round.

Power Grid is mainly about efficiency and strategic planning. The goal is to power as many cities as you can, and the player who is the most efficient and can do it the fastest will win. Also, how much are you willing to bid for that attractive power plant? Should you spend your limited funds connecting choice cities first or overbidding for that new power plant? Is it worth it to spend a bit more to connect to distant cities in order to cut other players off from a city network? Should you target cities in cheap but congested networks or go for the isolated expensive ones? These are questions you need to always keep in mind, and the answers will change depending on how your opponents play as well.

The game also has expansion boards and power plant sets. New boards include France, Central Europe, China and Korea, and each introduces interesting aspects to the game. For example, the order in which power plants are revealed in the China game reflect's the country's planned economy. Similarly, there are 2 resource markets in Korea to reflect the separate North and South economies, and the North Korea resource market doesn't have uranium (right...).

Overall, Power Grid isn't too challenging a game to learn. The mechanics are pretty straightforward and easily grasped, though it might take time to master the efficiency and fund-allocation required to be really good at it. The game takes just over 2 hours, and is one of few games that can play up to 6 players without losing its appeal or taking too long.

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Scrabble Is Still A Great Board Game!

Scrabble is one of the most popular board game manufacturers around. It's a word game in which two to four players use individual lettered tiles to form words on a game board marked with a 15x15 grid. The lettered tiles are each worth a certain number of points, and the points are added up to get the player's score for that round. There are also squares on the board that double or triple the points of the tile placed there.

The game was invented by an architect, Alfred Mosher Butts, in 1938. He wanted to make a new game, and analyzed what kinds of games were available. He discovered they fell pretty much into three categories:

number games, such as bingo, dice;and dominoes;

move games, such as chess and checkers; and

word games, such as anagrams.

Butts decided to make a game combining chance and skill, so he used features of crossword puzzles and anagrams to make his game.

To make his new game, he combined parts of doing anagrams and partly how you work a crossword puzzle. To decide on letter distribution, Butts studied the front page of The New York Times and did painstaking calculations of letter frequency. His basic cryptographic analysis of English, along with the original tile distribution he worked out to match the letter frequency continue to be valid after all these years.

His first word game was called Lexiko. Later he decided to make a variation with the board and crossword-type game play and named it "Criss-Crosswords". It featured a game board made of architectural blueprint paper glued onto an old chess board.

Although Butts made a few sets of the game himself, he didn't have much luck selling the game, and no major game manufacturer would buy his invention. Later, around 1948, he met James Brunot. He owned one of the original Criss-Crosswords games, and bought the rights to manufacture the game from Butts in exchange for a royalty on the sale of the games. Although he left most of the game the same, he did change the rules to make it easier to play. He also slightly rearranged the premium squares and changed the name to Scrabble.

The game was not an instant success. Butts and his family made 2,400 sets of the game that first year, and lost money doing it. However, the game steadily grew in popularity. Then in the early 1950s, the president of Macy's tried the game while on vacation and liked it so much, he ordered it to sell in his store. That was the tipping point, and within a year, Scrabble was so popular the games were being rationed to stores around the country.

As Scrabble grew in popularity, it came to the point Brunot could no longer meet the demand, so he sold the manufacturing rights to Long Island-based Selchow and Righter (one of the manufacturers who, like Parker Brothers and Milton Bradley Company, had previously rejected the game). Selchow & Righter bought the trademark to the game in 1972.

In 1986, Selchow and Righter sold the game to Coleco, who soon after went bankrupt. The company's assets, including Scrabble and Parcheesi, were purchased by Hasbro.

Today Scrabble is a trademark of Hasbro, Inc. in the United States and Canada and of Mattel elsewhere. This game is so popular, it is sold in 121 countries in 29 different language versions. One hundred and fifty million sets have been sold worldwide, and sets are found in one out of every three American homes. It comes in a Standard, Deluxe and Junior edition, plus a travel edition. There is a Spanish and a French version. It can be played on computers, Sony PSP, and the Nintendo DS.

Interesting Facts About Board Games

Board games have a very long history, having been around for centuries; however, they have become a popular past time among the middle class sometime during the 20th Century. Many of the more classic games on the market today got their start during World War II.

There are many of today's board games available that have become one of the many exciting games offered in computer format. Computer games can be played in single or multiplayer versions. In single player games, you will find that your opponent is the computer. For Multiplayer games, you will play the game against other players who love to play the game. Many computer games got their start as a very complicated board game. The reason many board game designers have made computer games available, is because it is easier to learn the rules, because the game will point them out as you go, and it is also saves the player in set up time.

Many board game suppliers use other components, in addition to its normal pieces, such as, CD's and DVD's. The games played on these components are easily transferable and interactive. You can play on your computer, and in some cases you can play the game on your television set. It is interactive, as the game has may features that allow you to answer question and make decisions. Through these components, a new player will learn the rules faster because they get hands on experience in playing the game.

The board game industry has created many thousands of board games. These players can be played by single players who play against themselves; they can also play in multiplayer and play against another person and even team play where one team of player is pitted against another team of players, such as trivia type games and some of the many acting games and drawing games. There are also children's games, teen games, and games for young adults. In addition some of the games are geared towards the boys and there are some just for the girls. Board Games offer many variations for the people who play them.

You will also find that a great deal of imagination was put into creating these board games. Games such as Monopoly, Go, Risk, and Scrabble have been designed with intricate rules and strategies to keep any player happily playing the game. Chess brings with it very complex detail and complicated move patterns that make a person have to use all of their mental processes. Monopoly teaches its players important real estate and banking strategies that will teach its player how to budget for the investments they want to make while playing the game. Each game comes with its own concept and its own rules but all of them offer players and exciting gaming experience.

Some games depend totally on your ability to come up with strategies, build on your previous strategy, and create more advanced strategies. Chess games require you to think on your feet, and to modify your strategy every time your opponent makes a move. There are some board games that require no decision making skills, these depend on luck, and are usually children's games such as chutes and Ladders or Sorry. Adult gamers prefer games that make them decide on something and prefer games where the manufacturer designs the game to depend on both luck and strategy, such as Monopoly and Risk. While there are many other considerations, when choosing your board game, but each game was made to keep you entertained so you can play any games.

4 Questions to Ask Before Selecting a Game Board Manufacturer

Tough economic times have fueled a renewed interest in good old-fashioned board games. With less discretionary income, many households are turning to family game night rather than looking to more expensive entertainment options. In turn, this has created more opportunity for would-be game designers and developers to bring their ideas to market. Finding and selecting the right board game manufacturers is an integral part of this process.

Once the initial concept and the ensuing creative details for a new board game or puzzle are in place, it is then necessary to find an experienced and reputable game board manufacturer to make it a reality. All game designers, from the largest toy manufacturers all the way down to the smallest start-up enterprises, need to weigh this decision carefully. This is because partnering with the right game board manufacturer can mean the difference between success and failure for the new product.

Here are 4 questions worth considering when selecting a game board manufacturer:

How much experience do they have? Do they specialize in producing board games or is it simply an add-on to their other production offerings? It is important to find a manufacturing partner with a lot of experience in the type of product you wish to produce. Mistakes in this arena are very costly in terms of both time and money and working with a qualified game board manufacturer can help minimize this risk.

Who are their other clients? Do they freely share their design portfolio? If so, are there any easily recognized brands represented in it? Although it is not an absolute guarantee, odds are if they are working with any of the major game companies, such as Parker Brothers or Hasbro, they most likely produce quality work. This isn't to say that smaller or newer manufacturers without big name accounts aren't worth checking out, as well. Just be sure to ask for testimonials and/or referrals from their current customers before making a decision.

How comprehensive are their services? Some game board manufacturers offer a full line of support services to help guide projects easily through the production process. This can greatly reduce the amount of time and effort needed to get the project completed. For example, do they offer comprehensive graphic design services to help bring your vision fully to life or will you need to devote time and energy to outsourcing that yourself? Also, do they offer a full range of fulfillment services such as assembly, shrink wrapping, warehousing and distribution? Without question, a full-service game board manufacturer can greatly simplify and streamline the process of creating and distributing a new product.

Can they provide production-quality samples? Some manufacturers have the ability to provide realistic prototypes before launching into full-scale production. Manufacturing a board game is a complex and expensive process and it is more cost-effective to find potential problems before production begins. Therefore, it is important to find out if this option is available before making a final decision.

Clearly, launching a new board game is a big project. However, finding the right game board manufacturer for the job can make the process go much more smoothly.