#2/52. A Classic Game - The Game of Life

The Game of Life ©1985/1991

As part of my 2016 52 Game Challenge one of the categories is "A Classic Game". For this one I chose a game from my childhood that I loved to play; The Game of Life. This is a game where you start out as a single pink or blue peg in a car traveling down the path of life. Your first decision is whether or not to got to college or start a career. Then you get married and go through the rest of your life having experiences and making decisions. You buy a home, get loans, pay them off, pay taxes, pay for day care, car accidents, home disasters, etc. If you have the right kind of insurance, you're safe. If not, you have to pay up.

The Game of Life ©2007

Somehow I wound up with two different versions of this game. After we played the game last night, Mark, Nicole, and I compared the two copies. The game we played was the ©1985/1991 version. It seemed very different from the version I remember from my childhood. There were fewer baby squares for one thing. There were more LIFE squares that gave you money for doing extraordinary things. We opened up the ©2007 version that we have and took a look at it just to compare the two versions. It seemed to be much more like the version that I remember except that it looked a bit more cartoony than I remember.

Nicole asked how old this game was. Mark remember playing it when he was a kid, so we looked it up on Board Game Geek. BGG has it published in 1960. We also found out that it was based on an earlier game called The Checkered Game of Life that was first published in 1860!!! While that doesn't meet the classic definition when compared to games like Chess or Go, I would say that being 156 years old counts as a Classic Board game none-the-less. Don't you?