Board Games

I love playing board games and have for as long as I can remember.   When we weren’t playing Legos, my brother, sister & I used to spend hours playing board games in our younger years, sometimes making up our own rules but mostly playing by the original rules.  In addition to the usual ones such as Risk, Clue and Monopoly, there were a few unique ones that were really quite fun.  It’s a little disconcerting that many of these games are now considered VINTAGE!  Here are a few of my favorites in no particular order.

Wildlife (by Spears) 

In this game endorsed by the World Wildlife Fund, players race around the world trying to find specific kinds of animals to fill their zoos.  It was a fun game that subtly taught players different facts about animals including where each type was found in the world.  For example, you could only find the giant panda in China.  Alligators could be picked up in Florida.  You could pick up animals that weren’t specific to your zoo and use them to trade other players for animals that you needed.

London Game

The London Game is what helped me to understand and figure out the London Underground train system long before I ever went to London.  The board is a fairly accurate map of the London subway system, complete with varying colored lines weaving throughout London.  Each player has a certain number of destinations to visit in London and has to figure out the best way to get there.  Destinations include the Tower Bridge, London Zoo, St. Paul’s Cathedral and The War Museum.  The first player to visit all his destinations and return to their starting station wins.  When Sarah and I visited London shortly after we were married, I felt like I already knew where everything was and which station/line to take from years of playing this game.  I was very happy to purchase this one again a few years ago.

Wide World of Travel 

This game, perhaps the oldest one of the lot, was another one that snuck in the educational element. The board was a map of the world with various destinations dotting the globe.  Each player moved his 1950s-style jet airplane/spaceship across the map trying to visit each destination and collecting product cards before the other players reached theirs.  Players learned where Moscow, Peru, Cairo, Turkey and Alaska were.  A transparent weather guide that was placed on over the board in various places could cause lots of havoc since you never knew when it was going to move.

What board games do you like to play?  Do you have any childhood favorites that you’ve rediscovered? Any new ones that you enjoy?

Stellarium

While doing some Googling to show Carlos pictures of Jupiter, I stumbled across what has to be the coolest astronomy program I’ve ever seen. Stellarium is a free open source program that allows the user to see the night sky (or even the day sky) from anywhere on Earth. From their website: “With Stellarium, you really see what you can see with your eyes, binoculars or a small telescope.” The program automatically defaults to the current system time, but has a great feature of being able to go backward or forward in time to see the affects of changing night sky. Ever wanted to learn the constellations? With Stellarium, you can turn on the constellation names and lines, as well as some constellation art. You can pan the sky and look for stars, galaxies, nebulae, planets, etc. Then with your new-found knowledge, go outside and spot the stars and planets you just found. But perhaps the best feature by far is that when you find an object of interest, you can then zoom in to that object as if you were looking through a telescope. I did a search for Saturn (who doesn’t like to look at the rings?!), zoomed in and there it was in all its beauty complete with moons. Searching for and finding nebulae was incredible. Be warned that the program takes up an incredible amount of memory. If you’re into astronomy, have kids that would benefit from learning about it or even just want to fiddle around with an incredibly cool program, check out Stellarium. This is a program I could spend hours on.