Gaming

Classic Games

Classic Games and Toys - Older than You Think

Children have always played games. Today we find many of them on our mobiles, computers, tablets and video games, but you have surely[1] played traditional board games with your friends or parents growing up. You will be surprised how old some of them are.

Paper and Pen RPG (Role Playing Games)

If we asked you to name the first role-playing game that used a squared[2] paper as a gaming board[3], a game master[4], strangedice[5], and a complex set of rules[6] that decided how players moved and attackedfoes[7], there’s no doubt[8] that you would say DungeonsDragons which was created in 1974. It was in a way the embryo of today’s ever so popular online game World of Warcraft.

You would be wrong though: 160 years before that, there was a game called Kriegsspeil. It was used by the Prussian Army to teach military tactics to officers-in-training. Players were pitted against each other on a gaming board with dozens of removable[9]tiles[10]that represented landscapes such as rivers and hills. All this in order to create of a nearly unlimited[11] number of practice battlefields.

Did it make the soldiers better in combat? I don't know, but have you heard of a country called Prussia today?

Remote Control Toys

What about remote control toys? Surely they were invented[12] in the 1950s at the earliest? Wrong again! The first remote-control toy was actually invented in the late 1890s by Nikola Tesla. At the 1898 Electrical Exhibition in Madison Square Garden, Tesla showed off a remote-control boat outfitted[13]with functioning lights, rudders[14], and a propeller.

The Sims

The Sims from 2000 is the classic video game where your only task[15] is guiding your personalized character through a lifefraught[16] with love, career changes, infinite[17] amounts of decorating, inexplicable[18] house fires, and mysteriously disappearing pool ladders[19].

With the exception of the latter two, those were also the objectives of the 1985 video game Little Computer People. Like The Sims, players had the ability[20]to customize[21] their houses and command[22] their characters to perform actions like watching TV, reading, playing poker or even playing board games with you.

Paintball

The game of paintball that we know and love was invented in the 1970s by two friends, Charles Gaines and Bill Gurnsey, who found an alternative, and painful, use for the paint-pellet guns that until then had only been used by farm workers to mark livestock.

If you had lived in the early 1900s, you might have played an earlier form of paintball known as Wax duelling: a sport where men would partake[23] in duels using pistols that fired wax bullets. Competitors were required to[24] wear specialist armour[25] to protect them from any serious[26]injury[27]. There were a number of incidents[28] reported but nevertheless, this sport soon became so popular that it even appeared at the 1908 Olympic Games in London.

Monopoly

Monopoly is the fun, hyper-capitalistic game that’s been tearing families apart since 1934.

However, Monopoly was itself inspired by a 1904 board game called The Landlord’s Game. Created by Elizabeth Magie, The Landlord’s Game was designed to teach people how property owners at the time made big fortunes by exploiting[29] poor people. Magie hoped that children who played the game would recognize the unfairness[30] of this system and be able toprotect themselves against it later in life.

Bingo

Many of you are surely familiar with bingo after spending hours on mobile bingo sites or from watching the TV-show Bingolotto in Sweden. Before that, people had to go to big bingo halls in order to play!

Bingo is actually a very old game. It dates back to 16th century Italy and is a game still played across Italy every Saturday. The game took on its modern form in the 1920s when Hugh Ward created the rules we still use today.

[1]

säkerligen

[2]

fyrkantigt

[3]

spelplan

[4]

spelledare

[5]

tärning

[6]

regler

[7]

foe - fiende

[8]

ingen tvekan

[9]

borttagbara

[10]

brickor

[11]

obegränsad

[12]

uppfanns

[13]

utrustad

[14]

roder

[15]

uppgift

[16]

fyllt

[17]

oändligt

[18]

oförklarliga

[19]

stegar

[20]

möjlighet

[21]

skräddarsy

[22]

befalla

[23]

delta

[24]

var tvungna att

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skyddskläder

[26]

alvarlig

[27]

skada

[28]

händelse

[29]

utnyttja

[30]

orättvisa