Classic Board Games that Shouldn't be - Family Games to Skip

Battleship

This is a two player game of guessing where your opponent has placed 5 plastic ships on a 10 by 10 grid. In a word, boring. It’s just a guessing game and not a very fun one at that. Perhaps, post Cold War, battleships have lost some of their appeal, but Battleship is a game no one here ever wants to play.

The Game of Life

Perhaps a little too much like real life, The Game of Life is unduly complicated. A game cannot be player without multiple references to the instruction booklet. If that isn’t enough, the game is boring. Travel around the board in a plastic card and try to amass the most money in this game of luck. My kids love putting little plastic pegs into the car to represent people, but beyond that we rarely finish a game. They are done about halfway around the board.

Parcheesi

Another boring, go around the board kind of game. The most excitement comes when you roll a double and get to make extra moves. This is another game that my kids never want to finish. I remember loving Parcheesi as a kid, but looking back I can’t understand why.

Mouse Trap

Build a Rube Goldberg machine to capture a plastic mouse. Conceptually the idea is fun, but the cheap plastic pieces hardly ever come together so the machine will actually operate. Building the machine is the only part that ever interested my children. They had absolutely no interest in the actual game of Mousetrap which requires players to go around the board and earn pieces of cheese, giving them a chance to operate the machine. It didn’t take long for one of the piece to be lost, rendering the entire game unplayable. Fortunately it was no big loss.

Twister

Lay the big plastic mat on the floor and spin the spinner. Then place your hand or foot on the dot on the mat that matches what is on the spinner. This game always ends up in a battle. First, someone has to be willing to sit out to spin the spinner and call out the results. There are no laughs I remember from my childhood, just fights. Then there are screams of “he stepped on me on purpose,” “she pushed me so I fell,” “they took the only spot I can reach.”. The Twister crimes go on and on in this house, which is one reason the game is now in the basement.

Ker Plunk

Start by sliding sticks through a cylinder and then pour marbles on top. Players take turns pulling out sticks and collecting marbles that fall through the cylinder. Part of the game requires player to turn the cylinder so the marbles drop into their cup, the turning motion often causes the marbles to fall and then arguments about whose marbles they are ensue. The setup takes too long, almost as long as the game itself. Another game that no one ever wants to play.