1980's Arcade board games

Who has/had a board game from a video game?

I used to own this Pac-Man game. Wish I still had it, even though it was quite a clumsy game. You had to use Pac-Man to eat the marbles, but they rolled away before you had it.
Basically had to force feed him, or just dump it through the hole in the top.

I had that! I loved it! I also had Zaxxon, Frogger,
And Donkey Kong.

I was addicted to arcade video games from 1977 to 1984, but I wasn't even aware of the existence of board games based on those video games.

I do not own any of the old ones, but the newer Pac-Man game (which I'm seeing for as low as > $10 these days) is much better than it has any right to be.

^yes, we have that one too and it's actually quite fun.

I like the new pac-man one as well.

It wouldn't be too hard to boardgamify a lot of the early ones but im not sure they would be that fun since they were just fast twitch exercises in pattern recognition.

A 2 player trick taking bluffing game based on Joust could be thematically fun.

A dungeon crawl wrapped around the zaniness of Gauntlet would be awesome, especially if the rules REQUIRED you to say "The elf is about to die..."

Josh Look wrote: I do not own any of the old ones, but the newer Pac-Man game (which I'm seeing for as low as > $10 these days) is much better than it has any right to be.

I'm glad someone has reported on this. I see it at Target all the time. I'm tempted, because I *#$ing love Pac-Man. But when I think about a board game version, I usually default to, "Meh. I'd rather just play the video game."

If I see it on sale, I'll grab it.

Is it okay with 2 players?

It's basically only good with 2.

If we are all talking about the same pacman game, the buffalo games one, then yes, it plays very well with 2. In fact, I'm not sure divvying up the ghosts to multiple players would help at all, though I've only ever played with my kid. Ghosts go in a card driven order for specific distances IIRC so one player being strategic with them is way harder

My wife may kill me, but it's my birthday next week. I just bought myself a present for Target pick-up.

Pac-Man in less than 2 hours. $7.75

That's the one. Great with 2.

It's under $10 at Target, $12 on Amazon. It was $20. It's probably on its way out, so I'd just grab it if you're that interested

I had the old Pac-Man game; it was terrible.

My god, I'd forgotten these existed. I had pac-man and donkey-kong and even after playing them and finding out they were terrible, I still wanted the others. That's the power of marketing to kids.

Matt Thrower wrote: My god, I'd forgotten these existed. I had pac-man and donkey-kong and even after playing them and finding out they were terrible, I still wanted the others. That's the power of marketing to kids.

Yeah, most of the games kinda sucked. A lot of the appeal for me was having those arcade games stuck away in the corner of pizza joints, gas stations, and beach front surf shops.

I always had a few quarters in my pocket in case i stumbled across Dragons Lair or Operation Wolf while dad was pumping gas or getting take out, or at least a pac-man or defender with really low top scores so i could brand it with my initials for all to admire.

Much less the "youth gone wild" vibe of a full blown 80's arcade that didn't have a 50:50 mix of parents hovering over their kids like a chucky cheese does today.

Dammit, time to build a mame cabinet!

I'm still in Facebook jail for another two days (tempers are running high in discussions about the Chauvin trial) so I am avoiding the site, but I recently saw a post there from a friend about a bar that is basically an arcade that serves drinks. No charge to play the games, but they probably make up for it with overpriced drinks. Back in the old Broad Ripple scene, my friends and I would go to a certain bar shortly before closing time and play Night Driver to determine who was safe to drive home and who needed a ride.