Careers (1965)

We covered the 1979 edition of Careers early this year.  I wanted to see one of the older versions, figuring there would be some less politically correct squares.  So here is the 1965 edition.  Sure enough, there were some comically tasteless things to run into.  That space that says the director likes you now sounds creepy.

The main difference is that the 1965 version has 8 career paths and 8 squares on each side of the board.  The newer version has 6 career paths and 7 squares per side.  The newer board removed Uranium Prospecting and Farming, and changed Sailing into Sports.  As for those other four squares on the board, they were the four squares we pretty much ignored: Auto Show (change cash into hearts), Statue in the Park ($ into Fame), Yacht Show (cash into hearts again) and an obnoxious space where "wife goes shopping" and spends d6x10% of all your cash on hand.  I don't recall in the newer game that the player with the medical degree gets to collect cash from people who land in the hospital.

I won our first game by going into Big Business and using a card to land on "Gorgeous secretary - 4 hearts".  I was on my way to the Moon to win that second game where I had the $10K I needed to meet my formula and just needed a few fame points to win; I lost all my cash (see below), used a card to get the last fame I needed, and used another card to get the $10K back and win.

I want to protest against one square in particular.  I was on my way to the Moon and hit "Ship Explodes - Lose all cash".  Why would I have all my cash on hand on my way to the Moon?  Who does that?  It's not like there's a Walmart up there.  Seriously, I was four steps behind the space where the first man lands on the Moon.  There was no reason for me to lose my cash that way.  ;-)

Overall, it's just as much fun.  There is something lost by taking out the Farming track where you can get 2 hearts for having colorful autumn trees or prize animals.  


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Idle Planet Miner: Selling Your Galaxy

Image
Back in Idle Planet Miner, production was starting to bog down, with crafts taking an hour apiece, and sometimes needing hundreds of items to unlock new research.  So, I figured it would be a good time to test out their "Sell Your Planet" feature, which has so many people online asking questions. These idle games can't level up through an infinite many items, so they all have this same kind of game reset mechanism.  In Idle Planet Miner, the Sell Galaxy button shows you the value of your galaxy and how many credits you will get for it.  These credits are a kind of meta currency, letting you buy new rooms for your ships, with each new room offering a different game boost.  Clicking the Sell button will show you exactly what you will lose: all planets, cash, ores, alloys, items, research.  Which sounds terrible.  But you get to keep your dark matter, your managers, your beacon buffs (though you will have to research the Beacon again to get it back on screen),...
Read more

Ancient Games Book

Image
I had a former coworker contact me to say her mom had a weird book of old games, so we met up, and it turned out to be the classic Irving Finkel "Ancient Board Games" produced by the British Museum.  Dr. Finkel is a leading expert on ancient board games, and the book covers four classics: Senet, Mehen, Hounds an Jackals and the Royal Game of Ur.  The Royal Game of Ur is one of our favorites from this era, and was one of the first games I covered in this blog series.  I was familiar with the others, but never had a decent board to play on. The book comes with a little plastic tray with four throwing sticks and 8 playing pieces for each of two colors.  In each set, one piece is larger than the others, being the "lion" in the Mehen game. After dabbling with these games for about 45 minutes, we kept having problems picking up the perfectly smooth throwing sticks, and there was no clear distinction between the flat side and rounded side, aside from the subtle shape. ...
Read more

Hounds and Jackals

Image
Continuing with the book of ancient board games, the Hounds and Jackal board is gorgeous.  Every painted crack or chip in the supposedly wooden surface added character.  The original artifacts had holes in the board, and the pieces were little carvings of hounds and jackals on pegs.  Moving chips around the board was good enough to get the feel of it.  It's a simple race game, trying to get your pieces to the top of tree and off the board first.  There were no tricky rules for the throwing sticks.  You roll, you move. Since there were a few spaces with "slides", it's hard to not feel like you're playing a scaled down Snakes & Ladders game.  Some of these game ideas really do span most of human history.  There are also a few spaces with a little cross on them, where you roll again if you land there. The game was simple, and only took about 10 minutes.  This one had the most interesting set of variations discussed on the back page, since di...
Read more