Happy Days (1976)

I have been looking at reviews and descriptions of a lot of board games that were tie-ins to TV shows from the 1960s, 70s and 80s, and most of them are so generic they're hardly worth mentioning.

A more quirky game is the Happy Days game from 1976.  Here is the BoardGameGeek page.  And here are the guys at Board Game Archaeology covering it.  But I want to head back to the Javascript board games page over here, since I couldn't find anyone doing an actual playthrough.

The JavascriptBoardGame team has done another nice clean implementation.  

Sure, you roll the dice and move around the board, but there are some twists that make it fun to play.  First of all, the overall goal is to get 16 Cool Points -- these are scored by moving your peg around the jukebox at top right.  You have a few dollars to spend along the way.  One fun spaces is "Hey Nerd" where Fonzie calls you a nerd, so you lose a cool point.  On the "Sumthin' To Do" spaces and "Cruisin'" spaces, you draw a card.  You hold onto Sumthin' To Do card until you need them, but Cruisin' cards have actions to do, usually dice to be rolled to gain/lose cool points.

The developer once again added a mix of little sound f/x for fun.  I heard Fonzie actually say "Nerd" the first time I played (for a quick laugh) but haven't heard that again since.

There's a game within the game when you land on a DRAG space.  Then you select an opponent for a drag race.  The opponent can accept the challenge or chicken out and lose a cool point.  You then move both pieces to the diagonal drag strip across the middle of the board.  Winner gets two cool points.  Then the winner gets to send the loser to the Hey Nerd space of their choice (lose another cool point) and can move themselves to ANY space on the board (except a DRAG space), where the best pick of course is the space right before your house where you can collect your whopping $3 allowance next time you move.

There are some other minor rules, but the javascript walks you through them all in a sensible way.

So, while it involves a lot of rolling and moving, the meta-game of gaining and losing cool points and the game-in-a-game drag race make it rather entertaining.




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