Board/card games made from video games -- cataloguing the unfun spawn of twitch games

By Cory Doctorow at 11:02 pm Tuesday, Jan 29

Yehuda has compiled an exhaustive "Guide to Board and Card Games Based on Video Games (1971 to 2007)." These are the half-formed bastard stepchildren of video games, generally representing the worst excesses of ill-thought-through licensing greed. As a result, they're a largely unregarded and uncatalogued corner of the gameverse.

The bad news is that many of these games are pretty much now loss leaders to get people to buy into the video game with little originality or creativity. Witness the large number of new and useless CCGs based on recent video games, included in the packaging or given away at conventions.

While video games are challenging to your hand-eye coordination or logic, most board and card game adaptations relied entirely on spinners or dice, making them entirely unchallenging. Some of the designs are cute recreations of their video equivalents, but without the interesting mechanics to back them up.

Link (Thanks, Yehuda!)

(Image from X-Entertainment: Milton Bradley's PAC-MAN Board Game!)