Retro Board Games Interview

David Landis is both a popular culture expert and the founder of Awesome Avenue. He spoke to LoveToKnowBoardGames about choosing and playing retro board games.

David Landis talks about retro board games.

Awesome Avenue is an e-commerce/online store, launched in late 2006, devoted to classic fashion and pop culture memorabilia. We launched this store, originally, as an offshoot of an Internet radio station I was running called Ultimate-80s, but with the rise in popularity for vintage fashion, brands, and toys, we saw an opportunity to grow Awesome Avenue into a department store for popular culture. Some of our strongest selling products, especially during the holiday shopping seasons, are classic board games.

There is always this concern that with the introduction of new technologies, the older simpler items will get tossed to the wayside, and in many ways, this argument has proven to have little or no merit. For example, when the radio was originally introduced, people believed that this would cause the demise of books and newspapers. With the introduction of television, people were convinced radio would be forced into extinction, and with the advent of the Internet, no more need for TV. So far, we still have newspapers and books, radio, and TV.

Of course, there is no argument that we live in a complicated and technologically evolved society. However, with all the bells and whistles of our most loved technologies, many of these items have caused us to become very solitary. The iPod, Blackberry, and portable video games units like the PS2, for instance, are not items one really shares. They are essentially designed for use by one person. Board games, though, require interaction with another person in order to play them.

While board games parts are quite simple when compared with the complicated inner working of a Playstation, I believe there is an elegance in this simplicity. When playing a board game such as Monopoly, you're not looking at a 3 dimensional rendering of the property you're building on the Monopoly board per se (the little red piece is forcing the player to imagine they built and own a hotel on that street). You are, though, competing, and most importantly, interacting with at least one other person in order to play the game.

Classic board games were big sellers for us this holiday season. We found ourselves regularly packing Pay Day, Pente Deluxe Edition, Lite Brite, and Easy Money until we ran out of stock on that one. Easy Money, by the way, is no longer manufactured.

Again, it goes back to my earlier comment that it requires interaction with another human being, plus board games also allow for a large group to come together and, in a sense, intellectually challenge each other in a light hearted and fun way. With the complications of our world today, people like to escape to a time when the worries of our societies didn't weigh so heavily on them: childhood. And what better way to remember the fun times of your childhood than to have the toys and games that made you happy during that life period, and either recreate new memories with those items or introduce them to your own kids?

I’m not all that familiar with the newest games on the market, but I would definitely consider Pictionary, Cranium, and Taboo to, in the not too distant future, be considered classic games.

While video game systems like the Playstation and Xbox, and even the older systems such as Atari and Colecovision, allow for two people to come together to compete against each other, these people are not really interacting with one another. They’re more involved with their character on the screen beating the other player’s character. Board games allow for the entire family to get together, test their minds and bring out the competitive side in an environment that invites imagination and laughter, all while escaping their fast paced environments for some quality time, in an era where it's becoming increasingly difficult to do so. In a time where everyone is escaping everybody else through the use of iPods and Blackberries, board games cause us to break free from that shell and spend some quality time together which is beneficial for everybody.

To find those retro board games and other retro items, please visit Awesome Avenue.

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