Very sad to hear that Cap'n Lou Albano died. Some of will remember Albano as the insane pro-wrestling manager with rubber bands all over his face, and others for his stint as you-know-who on The Super Mario Bros. Super Show. In remembrance, here's an old article I wrote about SMBSS. Incredibly, it's Halloween-themed!
Spiders seem to be all over this year's Halloween Countdown. At the risk of being a boring and repetitive cad, we're going back to the web one more time:
From 1988, it's Milton Bradley's SPIDER WARS! Imagine my good fortune to find such an obscure board game in nearly perfect condition at a local yard sale. Considering that this was otherwise one of the worst yard sales in history, with the wares including half-used bottles of calamine lotion and dented up popcorn tins, this was an especially lucky find. I know fate when I see it, so I didn't even bother to haggle with 'em on the $3 asking price.
Given that I would've been thoroughly within the game's target audience in 1988, I can't believe that I've never heard of it before. If you'll allow me to make broad and unchecked statements based on my own personal experiences, Spider Wars is a rare little ditty that didn't remain in production for very long. I'd say that it was too "high concept," but that's a stretch of a description for a game that comes in a box adorned with graphics of spiders in high-top sneakers.
On one hand, I can see why Spider Wars tanked: It's a pretty dumb game with retarded directions. On the other hand, there are just so few board games that come with an army of neon-legged spider toys.
The two-player game comes with everything above, as well as an oversized instruction manual that features quirky spider art such as this. I'm not sure if there is another game I could compare this to. It's something like Connect-4 and something like checkers, but it's definitely not just a "spider version" of either of those games.
The photo above, in all of its oversaturated glory, does not give a proper indication of gameplay. Actually, only the green spiders should be shown on that side of the web. The orange spiders should be on the other side, where the second player would sit. The goal is to knock your opponent's spiders off the board by poking your own spiders' legs into where your opponent's spiders' legs are. It sounds more confusing than it is.
The spider in the center is what the instruction manual calls a "dangler" -- that's a spider that's had one its legs knocked out by an opponent. If a player manages to knock both legs out, the spider falls to the floor and is disqualified from the game. Sounds easy, but it really isn't. Players are only afforded two moves per turn, so it's easy to get your "dangler" back onto the web before your opponent can move in for the kill.
Since a single game of Spider Wars could conceivably last for seven hundred years otherwise, there's a second way to win. You can skip past your opponent's spiders and simply get one of your own spider's legs into the opposing player's "nest," which is represented by a peg hole on the other side of the board. This speeds the game up manifold, but it's pretty cheap to win just by getting to the other side of the board. True Spider Wars enthusiasts would never stoop so low, so for the sake of brevity, it's a good thing there are no true Spider Wars enthusiasts.
I'll give the game this much: It's a lot harder to win than it looks. The methods of winning are ridiculously simple, sure, but they're also ridiculously simple for your opponent. Essentially, you'll only win if the opposing player make a really stupid move. If you don't want to invest too much time into Spider Wars, play against an idiot.
...or just skip the game altogether, and use the swank spiders for another purpose. Their peglegs make them less than ideal as flat-out toys, but God invented X-Acto knives for a reason.
Spider Wars certainly reflects its era. In 1988 and its surrounding years, there were seemingly hundreds of board games that were light on the gameplay and nuance, but heavy looking like big ass bulky "toys." Board games never looked as cool as they did during that time, but only some of them were as fun to play as they were to play with, if that makes sense?
Which begs the question: Have you even had a board game that had all the makings of being awesome, even if you never really played it the right way? My #1 would be Mouse Trap. I've owned that game at least ten times in my life, and I don't think I've ever played it the right way. Forbidden Bridge would be another one for sure. Never bothered to read the directions on that one, but I sure got a lot of use out of it with my action figures. HOW ABOUT YOU?
Posted by Matt on 10/14/2009. E-mail me!
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I used to have Spider Wars! I have a lot of fond memories about it. And by a lot I mean I remember playing it once. But that one game was a legendary experience. After that I ended up just using the spiders as minions of the Shredder. “Knock, Knock Ninja Turtle sewer hideout, here comes a squad of neon spiders!”