The Worst Board Games EVER!

Today, I was looking through some of my past blog posts and came across my posting of "Strange Board Game Origins" which looked at the background of some of our most beloved board games. This walk down memory lane got me thinking about what board games have been produced which were probably best left in the imagination of its creator and not actually produced. 

Some of the resulting games are a little terrifying and many are really offensive.

Sinking of the Titanic

This game from Milton Bradley sends players across around the board, rescuing passengers from the Titanic‘s staterooms. You have to escort all the passengers to lifeboats before the ship goes down, at which point the game shifts gears, and you must now hunt for food and fresh water -- by drawing cards. A rescue ship eventually shows up, and players must race to it. The first one there wins the game. Everyone else dies. 

“The Sinking of the Titanic” received a ton of criticism when it was released in 1975. So the company released a sister version in the UK the following year, changing the title to “Abandon Ship.” This version is set in the Pacific Ocean, and the ship collides with a coral reef instead of an iceberg. The name change cost the company the all important name recognition of the doomed Titanic. But since people weren’t exactly eager for a game that made light of a famous tragedy, the switch was probably for the best.

Life as a Blackman

This Underground Games release from 1999 offered a simple yet heavy message: Life as a black man is hard. Delivering this message pretty much involved trotting out a parade of stereotypes, blurring the lines between satire and genuine racism. 

Players all start as 18 year old black males either in Glamourwood, Black University, the Military, or in the Ghetto. Through die rolls, players work their way through the randomly selected starting areas and into Downtown, an approximation of life in the real world. Players may find themselves going to Church to right past wrongs, or spend time in Prison for making bad decisions. The first person to reach the Freedom space at the top of the board wins.

Unlike many games on this list, “Life as a Blackman” isn’t forgotten. An app of the game is coming soon for your iPhone.

Blacks & Whites

Here’s another example of a game that tries to illustrate racism, with pretty shocking results.

Produced in the 1970s, “Blacks & Whites,” according to publisher Dynamic Design Industries, depicts housing discrimination through “the absurdities of living in different worlds while playing on the same board.” At the beginning of the game, players choose to either be a “Black” or a “White,” and the choice handily determines who wins the game.

The Whites comprise the majority of players, start with $1 million, and can buy property anywhere on the board. Their black counterparts are the minority, start the game with only $10,000, and can’t buy many properties. These properties that the players fight over range from the “inner ghetto” and “outer ghetto” to “lower integrated” and “upper integrated” neighborhoods to, lastly, “newer estates” and “older estates.”

“Blacks” and “Whites” each draw from their own set of “opportunity cards.” A typical White opportunity card: “Stock dividend from a company that makes tear gas. Collect $40,000.” A typical Black one: “Government begins urban-renewal project. You lose both Harlem and Watts. Collect full price less 10% from Treasury.”

Project Pornstar

Produced in 2004, “Project Pornstar” casts players as directors of their own porn flicks. If you’ve ever played a trading card game, you have a rough idea of how this works -- the various cards in the game represent components for your film, and the best combinations win you the most points. Since you’re making a porno, one set of cards represents your actors (men, women, amenable livestock), and another represents objects (handcuffs, for instance, or a cucumber). 

Another set, the “action cards,” further change the course of your film. If a performer’s face doesn’t quite meet expectations, you can play a card to throw a paper bag over it. There’s an “AIDS” card, too, of course.

Fun for the whole family!

Juden Raus! (Jews Out!)

Nazi Germany featured quite a few horrifically offensive anti-Semitic games, from shooting games to games tracking the triumphant rise of the swastika. But the most notorious of these games is probably “Juden Raus,” published in Dresden in 1938 approximately one month after “Kristallnacht” (the Night of Broken Glass). 

It’s a simple game. You roll dice and move your token to Jewish homes, where you collect Jews. You must then escort your Jews to a “collection point” so they can be banished from the city. “If you are the first to expel six Jews,” reads the game’s original rules, “you are the undoubted winner.”

Still, the Nazis were the most evil people in history, so it’s unsurprising that they produced such a game, right?

Not exactly. “Juden Raus” was manufactured by some private German company, and surprisingly, a major Nazi journal, the SS paper "Das Schwarze Korps", heavily criticized the game (issue No. 52, December 29, 1938, p. 7): An (unknown) author claimed that the game trivialized the anti-Semitic Nazi policies and that the international press would use the game’s existence to make the policies look completely ridiculous. The author’s main objection was that the game manufacturer was trying to profit from the Nazi slogan “Juden raus” (Jews out) to promote the sale of the game; and not that it's an offensive game. 

Dishonorable mentions: Gay Monopoly, What Shall I Be? The Exciting Game of Career Girls, and Busen Memo (Bosom Memory).