The Triflet at 19 shall pay 1 Stake, and proceed to the Songster at 38
June 30, 2014 10:12 PM   Subscribe

Giochi dell'Oca - A large (2,265) collection of The Game of the Goose circa 1550 to 2014. Some of them with detail e.g. Games of the Pilgrim's progress - Going to Sunday School - Tower of Babel and The New Game of Human Life.
posted by unliteral (3 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is a great link and a truly impressive collection - I wish I had something more to say about it, but it is remarkable to see how long game design was content to work in this handful of static forms and just how diverse they could still be visually and thematically.

I wonder when spiral motifs started to lose dominance over other archetypes of race games and to what extent they, along the way, had invented (and then perhaps lost) various mechanics we see in modern board games (circling the board, linear track, multiple laps, forking paths, piece specialisation).

Thanks again!
posted by curious.jp at 1:13 AM on July 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


This board game looks complex and ahead of its time, for sure.

No mention of The Game of the Goose is complete without the fact that it inspired THE GREATEST TV SHOW EVAR, El Gran Juego de la Oca, produced in Spain in the early 90s.

The show's contestants represented the game pieces, and after rolling for their turn, were compelled to perform feats of derring-do that verged on the truly dangerous (1, 2, 3, 4), or at least physically challenging, and sometime gross.

If they had the misfortune to land on the wrong spot, they could be tarred and feathered by Muerte, or have their heads traumatically shaved by Flequi the barber. I always wondered about the on-screen "dice" which decided the players' fates; the producers could have been controlling who won and lost (or lost their hair).

The whole production was filled with cheesecake and beefcake (with an emphasis on cheesecake)

My roommates at the time and I used to watch the show on Telemundo, rapt, despite it running for 3 hours, and despite us not speaking Spanish.
posted by dammitjim at 9:45 AM on July 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


The New Game of Human Life was designed and published by John Wallis, who so far as I can tell was an antecedant of mine if not an actual direct ancestor of mine. I am also a games designer and publisher, and had been one for more than a decade before I learned about John (and his sons Edward and John Junior, who followed him in the trade). Observers of the New Game's board will notice that John and I share a common passion for clear and simple rules-sets, and over-descriptive examples of play.

Funny old game, life.
posted by Hogshead at 12:25 PM on July 1, 2014


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