The Hour Draws Nigh...(BRAINS NOM NOM!)

From the deepest bowels they will come. From the tallest buildings they will rain down. From the stores, and the sewers, and the coffee shops they will shamble and crawl and drag their bulk. The worst part is, they will never stop...



Zombies, products of genetic mutation or life's ironic twisted step along the evolutionary path? No matter who you are, there is always the chance that one day you might find yourself huddled in the corner of a convenience store clutching your handbag or the nearest blunt object to your chest, trying to block out the droning sound of the living dead. Scary thought huh?


Well, in the spirit of making life's most serious situations pretty funny, since 2001Twilight Creations Inc. has given us just the tool to make a zombie invasion a fun filled evening with the family. Zombies!!! This is probably one of the most fun games that I have played to date. The premise is simple, be the first person to kill 25 zombies (which is a LOT harder than you might think) or, in the spirit of Hollywood, be the first person to get to the helipad and take off with the chopper. For those of you who may be saying, "wow, this guy sounds whacked!", I challenge you. Play one game with a few of your close friends and you will see how quickly the limbs start flying and I'm not talking about the zombies. Several games I'v played have gone from friendly to cutthroat in a matter of seconds. The game comes complete with zombie figures, bullet and heart tokens and the lovely deck of event cards. The event cards are what make this game awesome! Very quickly the game goes from, "Hey, let me help you out." to "Oh, you are SO boned!" The event cards can either do really cool things like help you kill zombies easier and move faster or really dark things like let you put up to 10 zombies on the map tile where your friend is . I'm not going to go into the full details but, hopefully I'll be putting up a blow by blow of the big zombipocalypse me and my brother are having pretty soon. It should prove to be really fun.

So, until next time, keep the batteries in the flashlight and the crowbar within arms reach. Just remember, that sudden thump in the middle of the night might not be the cat jumping off of the table...

Feeling Nostalgic

The other day I was chatting with my good friend Tony and we were talking about what we used to do as children to entertain ourselves. No, not that, get your mind out of the gutter. His son is constantly playing World of Warcraft (as both of us do) as well as X-box 360 and several other electronically powered forms of entertainment. This made us realize that 20 years ago when we were children we didn't have any cool stuff like that to play with. Hell, the regular old Nintendo Entertainment System didn't come out until 1985 and even then, you had to be one of the rich kids to get one. Needless to say we started passing the time talking about some of the old games we used to play so I realized that we actually had some bad ass stuff that we used to play with. It made you think and also helped us pass hours upon hours of time.

So I've compiled a short list of items to share with everyone to see if anyone else played these growing up.


1. Crossbows and Catapults

HOW COOL WAS THIS GAME?!?!? For those who didn't play it, there were two teams, blue and red (very basic), and the object was to capture the other's castle. "How would you capture the castle?" some may ask, BY SHOOTING THINGS AT IT!! Not only was this game the basis for hand eye coordination but, it provided lots of lessons in what "not" to capture. Like you could not capture the couch by shooting the discs at dad (found that out the hard way. Either way, this game was awesome.




2. The Uncle Wiggily Game

Uncle Wiggily is an elderly rabbit with rheumatism. How can that be fun? Think of the coyote and roadrunner but, make them British and a rabbit and a rhino. The whole point behind the game was to get Uncle Wiggily and the other characters to Dr. Possum's house. I don't remember anything about the game other than the fact that I used to play it for hours and I always liked it better than Candy Land.



3. Hungry Hungry Hippos

Now here's a game for everyone. The rules are simple and they haven't changed since the game came out in 1978. Hit the lever on your hippo the fastest and be eat the most marbles before they're all gone. No matter how many times I played this game it was never any less fun. Most of the times we would play this game like "Rock, Paper, Scissors". The games were over so fast that it was always the best of 2 out of 3 or 3 out of 5. Even today when I play it with my brothers, now 18 and 22, it is still as fun as it was when I was 5 playing it with my sister.

There were plenty of other games like Candyland, Chutes and Ladders, and Connect 4 that used to eat away days of our lives. However, these were what we had and they did the job that they were supposed to do. I was lucky enough to receive a new copy of the old Uncle Wiggily game as a Christmas gift a few years ago and I plan on playing it with my son once he's old enough. There are several new games that have hit my shelves over the past few years and I pride myself on the collection that I've assembled. In the next installment of this blog we'll go over one of my favorites. For now, just think, what did you do for fun when you couldn't plug yourself into an electrical outlet?