Cyber Scopes is a board game that comes with a futuristic looking pair of glasses that look like VR glasses. All they do is turn your vision upside down.

The game instructs you to accomplish increasingly difficult tasks while wearing the glasses. I would think you could accomplish the same thing with a strategically placed pocket mirror.

What I appreciate most is the fine print on the picture: “Cyber Scope Headset not shown to actual size”. Are they relatively bigger or smaller than the comparison board against which they are shown? By how much? And, why not?

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All Things Equal, makers of Loaded Questions, a party game with over one million sold, have created a political expansion for the game called Political Party.

Players write down the answers to politically charged questions, and then the player whose turn it is tries to guess who wrote which answers.

Rightly timed for getting into fights during this political season.

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The NY Times has a lengthy article on Republican presidential-nominee John McCain and his relationship to gambling: his passion for gambling and his relationship to the gambling lobby.

(source, image)

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A Touch of Evil by Jason Hill is another game straddling the RPG/board game line, ala Last Night on Earth: The Zombie Game (from the same publisher).

A Touch of Evil allows for both competitive or cooperative play. In competitive mode, you race to be the first to save the town. In cooperative mode, you band together to defeat a big bad-ass creature from Hell.

(source)

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General Manager and VP of Hasbro Studios at Electronic Arts, Chris Lange, wrote yesterday that video games will never replace board games.

One question I am often asked is whether interactive games will somehow replace the original board game versions.

I don’t see this at all. I believe there is just no replacement for getting your family together around the dining room table and playing a classic game of Monopoly. You just can’t replicate that time-honored tradition, and we don’t intend on trying.

There are things that we can do with interactive platforms around the TV that you can’t do with a board game. We really see them as complimentary experiences.

I genuinely believe that just about everybody who buys one of our products will have these board games in their closet and a large part of our marketing program is driving people back and forth between those two different play styles.

(source)

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The Financial Times has an article up on Abacus Spiele, makes of fine games such as Zooloretto, Bang!, Tichu, Anno Domini, Race for the Galaxy, and Torres.

The article praises German game companies and the German gaming scene in general. Sales are up.

(source)

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