vintage

The New Avengers Board Game

December 6, 2019 by Penny Leave a Comment

A man in an Oxfam shop very excitedly came out clutching a copy of The New Avengers Board Game for me when he saw me working my way through a pile of vintage MB Games that they had out on the shop’s shelves. He told me it had just come in and he was rather excited about it. Needless to say that it never made it onto the shop’s shelves as it came home with me straight away!

Published by Denys Fisher (the same company that was responsible for the Miss UK Board Game that we tried out earlier in the year) in 1977 it is very obviously based up on the TV series of the same name. The aim of the game is for you to get all your three Avengers into the Assignment Completed area on the game board.

Designed for 2 to 4 players, each player has three Avengers – Steed, Gambit and Purdey – and they start the game on the allocated coloured spaces in the centre of the playing board.

In the very centre of the board sits what has to possibly be the coolest part of the game – the hat and umbrella spinner. Pure class, and designed so that each time you spin it you get two numbers, one from the tip of the umbrella and one from the handle.

Players start by moving their Avengers around the central track once, before heading off onto their own “assignment’ track. On the central track they just have to make sure that they don’t try to share a space with any other playing pieces, but once they move to the assignment track more than one piece can reside on a square.

Once on the assignment track each Avenger must land exactly on the squares with their picture on. So Steed must land on every Steed square, Purdey on every Purdey one and Gambit on every Gambit one. The only contradiction to this rule is when an Avenger lands on a square with a car picture on it and then they travel by car to the next marked square, and don’t need to stop at their square on the way.

A player simply needs to get all his Avengers to the end of the assignment track and they have to get the exact number to reach the Assignment Completed area.

Once players are on the assignment track the game actually becomes a little solitary, with each player on their own bit of the board and no real interaction between players. I’m guessing the game designer took some inspiration from Ludo.

It’s a nice quick game though, if a bit frustrating at the end as you desperately try to be the first to get the exact number to get your Avengers to the assignment completed area. I can see it working well for a family with kids and adults playing together and I’m guessing that was Denys Fisher’s aim when they published it.

Vintage MB Games Chess Tutor

September 24, 2019 by Penny Leave a Comment

I’m a child of the 80s. A time when there seemed to be so much talk of computers playing chess. Not only were people asking if a computer could beat a human, but there were a variety of electronic computer games that promised to teach you how to play and give you a computer to play against. But how did people learn to play chess before we had computers to help? MB Games Chess Tutor was probably the answer.

On the box Chess Tutor promises that you can “learn by yourself in 4 hours”. That’s quite a promise, but as a child I think the thought of 4 hours of working through something like chess rules and moves might have put me off somewhat. Maybe I was just a child without a very good attention span?

Paper based learning

When I first saw this I assumed it was some sort off electronic game, but far from it. Released in 1975 Chess Tutor has people working their way through 84 pages of instructions (yes, 84!) to teach them how to play chess. Starting with where all the pieces go on the board and what moves you can make with each one, it then moves on to show how you can arrange your own pieces so not to get them taken, and how to capture your opponent’s King.

The way it works is by having pages that slide into a plastic tray with clear plastic over the board. You can then position and move your playing pieces whilst reading and following the instructions that are located to one side of you. It’s a simple system, but an effective one.

Also included in the box is a chess board so that once you’ve mastered the game you can sit down and try out your new skills against a real life opponent.

I’m not going to lie, this is probably one of the geekier games that I’ve covered here on Penny Plays, and not one that I’m sure I’m prepared to spend 4 hours of my life working through. But, if you’re after a non-computer based way to teach yourself chess then it’s actually a really good way of doing so.

There are some copies of Chess Tutor available on Amazon, and more over on ebay too.

Chess Tutor – the facts

The version we have was published by MB Games in 1975. Aimed at ages 10 to adult it can be played by 1 or two players, depending now whether you’re learning to play or actually playing a game.

Vintage board games

If you’re interested in vintage board games then why not head over to Facebook and join our new vintage board games group.

For more vintage board games and toys here on Penny Plays take a look here.

Disclaimer: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. If you buy anything having clicked through on them I receive a small amount of money (not even enough for a coffee most of the time) but it costs you nothing extra.

Turbo – a video look at a board game version of the vintage Sega Arcade Game

July 30, 2019 by Penny Leave a Comment

Introducing Turbo – the MB Games version of the vintage Sega Arcade Game.

We’re desperately trying to find time here to share with you all the wonderful vintage board games we’ve come across lately. A couple of local charity shops have really come up trumps unexpectedly, so we find ourselves with a bit of a backlog of games to both play and write about.

A still from the Penny Plays video review of Turbo - the 1983 board game from MB Games

For now though let me give you a quick video review of Turbo – the 1983 MB Games version of the Sega Video Arcade Game of the same name.

A full write up will follow soon, but it seemed silly not to share this video straight away.

If you’re interested in vintage board games then why not head over to Facebook and join our new vintage board games group.

For more vintage board games and toys here on Penny Plays take a look here.

The Underground Game & What’s the Letter?

July 20, 2019 by Penny Leave a Comment

As regular readers will know I love a charity shop. I spend quite a bit of time in them, and at car boot sales, looking out for vintage board games and toys. What you might not also know is that I’m a huge fan of the London Underground. I always keep my eyes open for tube memorabilia, although that’s never as plentiful as vintage games. Sometimes though the two passions come together and I go home very happy. That’s exactly what happened when I came across a small brown box in the middle of a pile of bric-a-brac that had the magical word “Underground” on it.

What are the games and how do you play

Gibson released the original set containing parlour games The Underground Game and What’s the Letter in 1977. They’re both relatively simple games that can be played with between 4 and 12 players. In The Underground Game there are 32 clues where the answer to each one is the name of a station on the London Underground. For those players that don’t have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Underground the game was supplied with maps of the network so that all players had an equal chance. More on those maps later.

What’s the Letter follows a similar format with 23 questions where the answer to each one is just one of two letters.

The thing that strikes me with both of these games is that once you’ve played them once you’re likely to remember the answers, making any subsequent games a bit pointless. Or am I over thinking it?

Whatever your views, both these simple games are quite good fun to play at any large gathering, or to use in some sort of a quiz or similar.

London Underground Pocket Maps

As an Underground fan I always love anything that related to the Underground, but the inclusion of vintage tube maps in the game took it from something I was just quite interested in, to something I simply had to buy. These aren’t maps designed just for the game, but instead the ones that passengers could pick up for free at tube stations.

The version of the game that I picked up isn’t the original 1977 one (you can tell by the fact that the original version apparently didn’t have anything in white written on the box). I’m not exactly sure when it does date from though. The tube maps I have are dated 1985, but looking online I’ve seen similar versions with the white writing being sold with 1978 tube maps. I’m left wondering quite how this all worked when the game was first released. Did they have some arrangement with London Underground where they sent them a load of maps that were then put into boxes? Or was a member of staff dispatched to the nearest station to H P Gibson and Son’s London office and instructed to bring home as many maps as they could? Which different versions of the map were included in different versions of the game? Does anyone know?

Vintage MB Games – Super 3

July 4, 2019 by Penny Leave a Comment

Master C has had a bit of a thing for playing noughts and crosses recently. He’s realised that with a bit of logic you can make it impossible for the other player to win. He likes winning. Rather a lot. As a responsible parent I realise that it’s my duty to make sure he understands that in life it’s not all about the winning. Nor is it possible to always win. That’s where finding a copy of the vintage 1978 game Super 3 comes in rather useful.

Now, Super 3 isn’t a game that I’m at all familiar with and a bit of online research suggests that it only came out under the name Super 3 I’m 1978. There was a 1992 variant called Super Tic-Tac-Toe, but it appears that it was relatively short-lived.

In Super 3 there is a plastic game board which has nine squares on it. These are numbered 3 to 11, in numerical order. Each square is in turn made up of nine peg holes. These two are numbered 3 to 11, but the centre hole of each does not have the number 7. Instead it just has the number of the square there.

Now the aim of the game is to take either three squares in a row (horizontal, vertical or diagonal) or a total of five squares. To win a square you have to either have three pegs in a row, or a total of five pegs. To be able to place a peg in a hole you have to roll the dice. If you roll a number from 3 to 6 or 8 to 11 you can either place your peg in a hole with that number, or in any hole other than the central one of the square with that number.

Players who roll a 7 can place a peg in any central hole, or in any hole in square number 7, including the central hole. If you roll a 12 you can place a peg anywhere on the board. Rolling a 2 allows you to remove an opponents peg and then roll again.

Once you have enough pegs to take a square you remove your opponent’s pegs from that square and fill it all in with your own pegs. Once this is done that square can not be touched again, even if your opponent rolls a 2.

All these instructions seem a bit confusing on first read, but once you start playing it’s actually really easy to know what you’re doing.

Super 3 is actually a fantastic game to play one on one with a child. It worked brilliantly for my 6 year old son. Complicated enough that he didn’t get bored, but not so complicated that he found it hard and gave up. It requires a bit of strategic though and to understand the rules about when you can place a peg where, but it’s a brilliant game for practicing adding up the totals on two dice too.

Super 3 – the facts

Published by MB Games in 1978. For two players, aged 7 to adult.

The blurb on the box says:

“The exciting game within a game. Three in a row wins you a box, but carry on, you must get three boxes in a row to run the hame. Your opponent may even be a box ahead, but a little luck and clever strategy can still cheat him of ultimate victory. Play this endlessly absorbing game within a game with all the family”

Vintage Board Game Haul from Vintage 72

May 20, 2019 by Penny Leave a Comment

Last week saw Bonn and I travel to Cornwall for work. As I often do on these trips, when not working myself I look out for places I can write about over on Penny Travels, or I go and trawl the local charity shops to see if I can pick up any vintage board games to write about on here. In Liskeard I went one step better, and found a whole shop devoted to vintage games and toys – Vintage 72.

This is what we bought…