So this past weekend I went to see the Battleship movie. Mainly out of morbid curiosity just to see how they could make a movie out of a board game! It’s a typical summer movie, meaning you have to turn off your intelligence to enjoy it. Since that’s easy for me to do, I thought it was entertaining, at least. But then I started thinking about my favorite board games, and if they would make good movies also. So basically, this is a cleverly disguised blog listing my favorite board games, really. But I’ll try to use my imagination to see if they’d be good movies, too! It might be fun, come on, give it a chance!

Hungry Hungry Hippos

I played lots of typical kids’ board games when I was little. Never was too fond of stuff like Candy Land or Chutes and Ladders. Battleship was OK, but I never got excited over it. And even at a young age I thought Twister was a little disturbing. But I loved Hungry Hungry Hippos! It made a heck of a racket, and required no skill to play. If I ever had kids of my own, Hungry Hungry Hippos would be in their collection. To this day I still think that game is cool. Granted, I don’t play the actual game, but a few years ago there was a Hungry Hungry Hippos arcade machine that a company made. It was associated with other machines like Skee-Ball, crane games, and coin drop machines, otherwise known as the “prize redemption’ category. When you put a quarter in, the balls would come out of the middle. The neat thing was that you didn’t HAVE to have all four players to enjoy it, as the computer would control the other hippos. You got tickets based on how many marbles your hippo ate. If I had an arcade of my own, I would definitely look for a Hungry Hungry Hippos arcade machine!

So would Hungry Hungry Hippos make a good movie? Well they could go two routes with this. They could make a cheerful computer animated movie for kids about four colorful hippos who are insatiably hungry and have an adventure because of that fact. Or maybe they could have a more ‘grown-up’ movie about four real life mutant hippos who are ravenously hungry and go on a rampage. And then it’s up to a crack team of hippo trainers to capture them! I figure the team of hippo trainers could consist of Milla Jovovich, Jessica Biel, and Parker Posey (and now you inadvertently know my favorite female actresses). But since it’s a kids’ game, I think the cheerful CG cartoon route is the best way to go. Sorry ladies, I know you really wanted to star in that hippo movie, but it’s not just meant to be.

Connect Four

Did you know that when I was a kid, they even made board games out of popular arcade hits like Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and Q*bert? None of them were very good, though. Aside from Hungry Hungry Hippos, my other favorite board game as a kid was Connect Four. It requires a little bit more strategy than the hippo game, but not so much that you can’t play it with a little kid and not have someone enjoy it. And if you are missing any pieces, all you have to do is get some from a checkers set. In the past couple of years, they’ve made some new Connect Four games that I’d like to try. One has layered pieces so you can try new strategies, one lets you build your own board, and one looks a bit like ring toss.

Connect Four is just too abstract for a movie, I think. One time on the Simpsons, they made a mock movie preview for Tic Tac Toe: The Movie, and it had a space theme. Maybe they can do that with Connect Four. The pieces could be UFOs, and the only way to destroy them would be to match them into formations of four. Yeah, probably a bad idea, but then, I thought Battleship couldn’t be made into a movie either.  Anyone remember the old Connect Four TV commercial?  “Pretty sneaky, sis!”

Carcassonne

OK, enough talking about kids’ board games. It may be hard for some of you to believe, but I am an adult and play games for older people, too. Anyway, about once a month me and some friends get together and play board games. Personally, I’m not a big fan of board games in general, as I’d rather do other things like play video games, watch a movie, etc. But I go to these board games nights just to see my friends. Heck, I’d go see my friends even if they were crocheting doilies or something. Anyway, most of the games they pick to play aren’t mainstream games, so it’s interesting to see what new games they have. One of the games they like to play is a little more mainstream than most, and it’s called Carcassonne. I’ve actually heard of it before, and seen it in specialty game stores with lots of expansion packs and whatnot. It’s even on Xbox LIVE, and was free for a while a few years ago. I missed out on it when it was free, though, because that offer went on a few weeks before I got my 360! Oh well!

Anyway, Carcassonne plays like a mix of a city builder and Pipe Dream. Each player takes a turn drawing cards that have land forms on them, like roads, cities, fields, etc. The rule is that the panels have to connect properly. Each player gets little wooden men pieces called ‘meeples’ and you can set them on roads, cities, and other places. When you finish connecting a road, city, or whatever, your meeple owns that property and you get points. Whoever has the most points at the end wins! There are other complicated rules, but we won’t go into those. It’s a pretty fun game and I like the little meeple pieces. They even make big meeple shaped cases to hold all your pieces!

I guess any medieval themed battle movie plot would work for a Carcassonne movie. Except I don’t know if they’d make the stars be called ‘meeples.’ They may have to change the name of the movie, though, because I don’t know how many people can really pronounce ‘Carcassonne.’ I know I can’t. I always just called it “The Meeple Game.”

Chateau Roquefort

This is another game that my friends and I have played on our board game nights. This one caught my eye because you use little mouse-shaped pieces, but this ain’t no Mouse Trap (I don’t think anyone plays Mouse Trap properly anyway, I think they just build the contraption). Anyway, Chateau Roquefort is like the classic game of Memory on steroids. You must match up two kinds of cheeses to earn a point, and when you do this five times, you win the game. But you have to have two of your mouse pieces on each matching panel in order to get the cheese.

But that’s not all. The whole box acts as the game board, and there are roof pieces to cover up all the cheese, so you have to remember where they are at. You get four moves per turn, and can use those to move your mice, check under rooftops, or slide panels around. So not only do you have to remember where all the pieces are, you have to remember where they go when players slide them around! What’s worse, you have to watch out for holes, because if your mouse falls into one, you’ll lose that piece! There are lots of other rules, too, and I’d be here all day trying to explain them all. There’s even an expansion pack called Cheesy Gonzales that adds a mouse piece with a sombrero who can move around the board really fast, and can add a bunch of moves to your repertoire if you can control him. Anyway, while this all sounds complicated, I was still able to understand it so you know it can’t be TOO bad.

Only problem is that this game is out of print, so it’s really hard to find. Especially since this game was made in Europe. I was surprised when my friends said it was supposed to be a kids’ game, because it was lots more complicated. But my friends also said that since this was an overseas game, they don’t treat kids like idiots like they sometimes do here. Maybe that’s why America’s education system sometimes is failing. Who knows?

Anyway, I would say that Chateau Roquefort would make a good movie, but there are already so many movies about mice, like Ratatouille, Flushed Away, etc. But kids like little animals they can hold in their hand, so I think there will always be market for movies about mice. So maybe a movie about mice trying to get “chee-ee-ssee” (that’s my best Monterrey Jack from Rescue Rangers impression), would be fun. Plus, maybe a Chateau Roquefort movie would cause the makers of the game to reprint more copies!

Scrabble & Scattegories

Even though my friends and I play lesser known board games, I’m certainly not a board game snob. I don’t mind mainstream board games, either! Since I majored in journalism in college and enjoy writing, my favorite kinds of games involve words. I really like Scrabble, but I’m not very good at it. But I bet if I practiced more I could get better. I’m spoiled because a long time ago, we bought a special edition Scrabble board that swivels and has grooved edges so your pieces don’t slide around. After you play on that, you’ll never want to play on a regular Scrabble board again!

Another word game I like is Scattegories. I’m really good at it, too! You have to think of items in categories using a certain letter of the alphabet that you roll with a 26 sided dice! You get points if you think of words nobody else does. I don’t think they could make a movie about Scrabble or Scattegories, though, unless maybe it was about a kooky English teacher who tries to teach kids new words and things. Maybe it would star a funny comedian actor like Steve Martin, Bill Murray, or Dan Aykroyd. Yeah I like the old stuff. Newer comedian actors just aren’t as funny to me.

Scene It?

One last game I like to play with friends and family sometimes is Scene It. We have a Disney edition that I kick butt at, and we have one of the 360 games, too. Can you imagine if they made a Namco Scene It? I would be UNSTOPPABLE! I guess that since Scene It is about movies, they probably couldn’t make a movie about a game about movies.

Conclusions

And those are my favorite board games! In the comments section, let me know YOUR favorite board games, and if they would make good movies, too! Later! –Cary

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