Vintage Games

Board games have been played in most cultures and societies throughout history; some even pre-date literacy skill development in the earliest civilizations. A number of important historical sites, artifacts and documents exist which shed light on early board games. Some of these include:

Senet has been found in Predynastic and First Dynasty burials of Egypt, c. 3500 BC and 3100 BC respectively. Senet is the oldest board game known to have existed, having been pictured in a fresco found in Merknera's tomb (3300-2700 BC).
Mehen is another ancient board game from Predynastic Egypt.
Go is an ancient strategic board game originating in China
Patolli is a board game originating in mesoamerica and played by the ancient mayans.
The Royal Tombs of Ur contained, among others, the Royal Game of Ur. They were excavated by Leonard Woolley, but his books document little on the games found. Most of the games he excavated are now housed in the British Museum in London.
Buddha games list is the earliest known list of games.

Board games first became widely popular among the general population early in the 20th century when the rise of the middle class with disposable income and leisure time made them a receptive audience to such games. This popularity expanded after the Second World War, a period from which many classic board games date.

Many board games are now available as computer games, including the option to have the computer act as an opponent; and many acclaimed computer games such as Civilization are based upon board games. The rise of computers has also led to a relative decline in the most complicated board games, as computers require less space, and the games don't have to be set up and cleared away. With the Internet, many board games can now be played online against a computer or other players. Some web sites allow play in real time and immediately show the opponent's moves, while most use e-mail to notify the players after each move.

Some board games make use of additional components, aside from the board and playing pieces. Some games use CDs, video cassettes and more recently DVDs to provide an accompaniment to the game. A genre of DVD games makes use of the interactive features of DVDs, often to provide a "quizmaster" for trivia games.

The modern board game industry is rife with corporate mergers and acquisitions, with large companies such as Hasbro owning many subsidiaries and selling products under a variety of brand names. It is difficult to successfully market a new board game to the mass market. Retailers tend to be conservative about stocking games of untested popularity, and most large board game companies have established criteria that a game must meet in order to be produced. If, for instance, Monopoly were introduced as a new game today, it might not meet the criteria for production.

Most of us don't talk about vintage games and computers at the same time. Games have been around forever but we hadn't heard of computers until the sixties or seventies so how could anything that recent be considered "vintage"?

If you decide to collect some of the first computer games, you'll find that many of them were trashed and are hard to find. They were an important part of our history and as such are very collectable.

At VintageGameSite, their mission is to provide you with information about vintage gaming and vintage computers from the first ever home computers to the 1990s.

The VintageGameSite has worked hard to bring together a solid representation of vintage hardware and vintage games from the first ever (first generation games) to the fifth generation games.

If you are interested in vintage computer games or hardware, we urge you to visit their site as here on "Vintage Games" we concentrate more on board games.

Once in a while I will be listing a few vintage games that I have for sale. If you are interested in buying one of them, please contact me by using the "contact" button at top left side of page.

I have over 500 positive feedbacks on eBay and no negatives so you can buy with confidence. Check out my auctions and feedback by searching seller "brewster-boy".

1. This is not a game but a cardholder for Canasta. The paper has a 1950 date and I think that it is Bakelite(looks like new). Box is in great shape with 50s style design. $5 plus shipping

If you've made it this far, I'd appreciate it if you would check out Dene's Place to see if there's anything that you might like for yourself or as a gift. It helps me pay the bills!

Thanks for stopping by! Be sure to check out my other lenses when you have time.

Much of the information used here has been researched from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.