Perfection
Type
Board Game
Company
Milton Bradley Lakeside
Country
United States
Availability 1973–
Slogan
Get Rockin' before the pieces start Poppin'!
Scattergories
"The Game of Scattergories," published in 1988 by Milton Bradley, is a great
game for any group to play. In the game each player fills out a category list
'with answers that begin with the same letter.' If no other player matches
your answers, you score points. The game is played in rounds. After 3
rounds a winner is declared, and a new game can be begun.
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The History of Trivial Pursuit
Trivial Pursuit was invented by Canadians, Chris Haney and Scott Abbott.
By Mary Bellis
It was the board game Time magazine called the "the biggest phenomenon in game history."
Trivial Pursuit was first conceived on December 15, 1979 by Chris Haney and Scott Abbott.
At the time, Chris Haney worked as a photo editor at the Montreal Gazette, and Scott Abbott
was a sports journalist for The Canadian Press. The two friends came up with the basic
concept of Trivial Pursuit within a few short hours. The pair were playing a game of Scrabble
when they decided to invent their own game. However, it was not until 1981 that the board
game was commercially released.
On November 10, 1981, "Trivial Pursuit" was trademark registered. That same month, one
thousand and a hundred copies of Trivial Pursuit were first published in Canada. Haney and
Abbott had taken on two more business partners (Ed Werner, corporate lawyer and John
Haney, Chris' brother) since 1979 to form the Horn Abbot company, and had raised their
initial funding by selling five shares in the company for as little as $1,000. Eighteen-year-old
artist, Michael Wurstlin agreed to create the final artwork for Trivial Pursuit in exchange for
his five shares.
The first copies of Trivial Pursuit were sold at a loss, the manufacturing costs for the first
copies came to seventy-five dollars per game and the game was sold to retailers for fifteen
dollars. Trivial Pursuit was licensed to Selchow and Righter a major U.S. game manufacturer
and distributor in 1983. The manufacturers financed a successful public relations effort and
Trivial Pursuit became a household name.
In December 1993, Trivial Pursuit was named to the "Games Hall of Fame" by Games
magazine.
Outburst
Outburst (subtitled The Game of Verbal Explosions!) is a game originally devised in 1986 by
Hersch and Company of Los Angeles and later licensed by Parker Brothers, now a division of
Hasbro. Since 2004, it has been produced by Mattel.
The game is played with two teams, using cards on each side of which a topic heading is printed,
followed by a list of 10 items that fall under the given topic. The object is to guess the items that
were chosen for inclusion on the card, given the topic
Atari
Atari took the world by storm and began the
Video Arcade Industry in 1972, when it released
the arcade game Pong. Five years later in 1977,
the company once again changed the face of
entertainment when it introduced the first home
video game console or VCS (video computer
system). The innovation of the VCS was that the
game was housed in a changeable game
cartridge, not on the console itself. This allowed
users to play an infinite number of games,
instead of just one as it was with the original
Pong.
As the number one video game console maker, Atari was a driving force behind 80’s
game play both at home and in the arcades, and the precursor to all the video and
online gaming that has come since.
Atari began an entertainment revolution
that is still going strong today with games like Pong, Centipede, Asteroids, Missile
Command and Space Invaders. Who can forget the burned in image of Pong on your
TV screen long after the game was turned off? It was a badge of honor that you had
spent entirely too much time trying to get to the next level of whatever you were
playing. Thanks to the innovative designers of Atari, people of all ages were given a
form of entertainment unlike anything seen before. Today lovers of the games which
started it all can play their favorite 80’s arcade games online thanks to the
Internet.
You can also now buy plug and play 80s video games that just pop into your TVs
audio and video slots. They come equipped with their own vintage 80s joysticks and
include games like: Gravitar, Asteroids, Real Sports Volleyball, Centipede,
Adventure, Pong, Missile Command, Breakout, Yars' Revenge and Circus Atari. There
is even a new Atari Flashback2 game console that comes pre-loaded with 40 games