I don't like how "the experience of time" changes with age. When I was (a lot) young(er), one year seemed to be a very long time. :-(

Indeed.

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I momentarily overlooked real life physical games, which I have now mentioned in the first post. The likes of Cricket and Soccer etc.

And of course, Golf is one of those games you could play on your own if you really wanted to. As is flying a kite and tossing a Frisbee. Not to mention Archery and shooting with guns. Skipping Stones is probably a game too.

And then there is Adult Games .... but I won't go into them.
Are you saying you did not enjoy the following?

Sink The Pink
Bury The Hatchet
Tie Up The Loser
Down The Hatch
Hang 'em High
and everyone's favorite - Walk The Plank

I could mention others, but sensitive young minds might be reading ... a few old ones too.

Chess, marble run, darts, ...
Five dice, making tea xD, a tank of fishes,
Copying music to cassette from radio (to sd card from yt those days), dancing in the kitchen... Inspiring thread ^

When I was a kid, yeah, Cluedo, Risk and Monopoly were the usual board games we used to play occasionally.
As card games go many don't have a corresponding in english, but one has was companion of summer evenings was called Derner which we used to engage epic battle at. There are similar modern versions of it called Uno or Solo but nothing is better than than OG.

Long before video games there were ....

Man discovered fire. First it was the result randomly in the bush of some trees bursting into flames, but usually it was the result of a lightning strike. The thunder sound we know today was literally god shouting 'I threw you some fire! Look over here!' And the bush people would go and check and yell back 'we don't see any'. so he would throw another one.

Curiously why god would throw down fire, while also throwing rain on his people is anyone's guess. It is by some people's hypothesis he was peeing on the land and to make up for the extra moisture he needed to add heat.

Anyways, once fire was discovered, man could sit in his cave and warm himself, cooking his meat over his fire and eating it. And the fire had to constantly be tended to, or else it might go out. Fire could burn you, but it also kept you warm. Fire was a mysterious being, liking some twigs and things and not liking others. A very peculiar god. If your fire went out, you'd hope your neighboring cave dweller had a fire and you got permission to get some of his fire to carry back home.

Eventually man learned to make pots and containers, and he learned if he put water in a pot over a fire, he got hot water! Revolutionary! Stews became a thing, and not just meat on sticks.

And so man became the creature that was known to control fire.... sort of.

Traditional card games were never really my thing. When I think of card games, my first thought is usually Magic the Gathering. I haven't actually played it in ages, and even back when I did it was with older, mostly common cards bought in bulk. It's a great game, but trying to stay current with it would require an insane amount of money and dedication to keep abreast of the new rules. When I was a kid I used to really like Risk, but I think it was more the appeal of playing with the cool little armies than the game itself, which is honestly not very good and way too random.

My favorite board game definitely used to be Talisman. For a fantasy nerd it was just the best.

I still love board games in general, and fortuantely there are many fantastic new games these days - Inis, Lords of Waterdeep, Everdell, Cyclades, The King is Dead and many more. Unfortunately getting people together to play them gets harder and harder.

That said, I'm not too fond of the trend that got strong with Kickstarter, of making board games ever more elaborate, with a shitload of cool looking miniatures and other elements, basically stuff that looks great on the photos and helps inflate the price (and overcomplicates the game) beyond reason.

Though I am at a much lower level than the level 60 OP, I can say that Ludo, and Snakes and Ladders were very common in my childhood.
Also there were Indianised copies of Monopoly, marketed usually as Business or some similar name (sometimes in a regional language).

Why does that remind me of this?

When I was born, we only had checkers, chess, and playing cards. My favorite games were "Préférence" (which originated from the French "Vist" game, I believe it was a variation of the English "Whist" game) and "Up & Down" (which was somewhat similar to Whist). I disliked Lotto, but there were plenty of variations of Monopoly and games without any economic factor involved. In one such game, players would simply roll the highest score and hope to finish the route first.

And then came the BBC Micro and ZX Spectrum, and I never looked back. The UK will forever hold a special place in my gaming heart because they introduced me to affordable gaming computers, and for a while, the best and most innovative video games were coming from there.

But then the ugly IBM PC arrived, with its awful CGA games and even more dreadful PC Speaker screeching sound. The ZX Spectrum was much cooler, at least until 1990, I think, when the release of Wing Commander with its vibrant 256 colors and proper sound card support put the final nail in the coffin for old-school video tape games. Of course, there were other good games on the PC, but Wing Commander was the shiny gem that changed everything.

Ah, those were good times.

Thats interesting (given your location). Assuming you grew up there was this post Soviet or post-Tetris (Micro having one of the first versions this side of things as I recall)?

So, would this be up your way? An open source version of Tabletop Sim?

You don't have to been born 60 years ago, mate. 20 years after you I was raised on board and card games, Lego, Mechano ... tactile stuff. We had a Tandy PC eventually, but even then it wasn't used a great deal; chances are I'd play with something physical than a PC game. Either that or more rarely watch something on VHS.

Love your avatar!!

My family played Monopoly and I hate boards games today because of it. Too competitive and too much drama. Thank goodness I lived near the woods so enjoyed playing in nature.

In my case it was the Soviet era, I grew up in Soviet Russia and witnessed its downfall soon after.

The USSR collapsed on December 26, 1991. The BBC Micro and ZX Spectrum arrived in 1981 and 1982, respectively. Owning those machines was illegal and could have had serious consequences under the law. As far as I know, they were never officially introduced to our market, whether it was post-Soviet era or not. However, we did have various locally manufactured clones, which I don't believe were ever officially endorsed by Acorn Computers or Sinclair Research.

The BBC Micro was among the first available computers for gaming enthusiasts, usually hardcore programmers working for the government or the elite with access to foreign goods. I was lucky enough to play on it since my father took it from his work for a while. Alas, it was taken away in a few weeks. However, it was soon replaced by the ZX Spectrum, which we managed to buy for ourselves in the end.

As for the games, they were all pirated and distributed on cassette tapes illegally, quickly spreading on the black market. We loaded games using common tape players, which was a very slow process since no one had the ZX Microdrive. There were two guys in my school with the ZX Spectrum and several people among my neighbors as well. The ZX Spectrum became dominant in the USSR for years to come.