Riding on the relatively recent success of the Super Mario Bros. franchise is this collection of classic board games that include the following:
-- Checkers – This is your typical two-color chip game of strategy, this time replaced with familiar friends and foes from the Mario World, your Yoshi dragons and Koopa creatures. They jump over each other, Mario style (Bowser awaits as the king on one end of the board). It is very enjoyable to watch and is a nice little twist to a typical dozer of a board game.
The object of the game is to remove all of your opponents from the board.
-- Yacht – This is probably better known as Yahtzee to many. This is probably the most addictive games of the bunch, and is certainly not hard to mess up programming-wise simply because the premise is so simple. Basically you are required to collect a certain number of required combinations. Some strategy is involved in deciding what combinations to pursue, and value is awarded to those combinations that are harder to attain. Mario also appears to make some enjoyable comments in this one and some of the other screens using his stereotypical Italian accent.
-- Dominoes – This is another classic that it is hard to go wrong
by. Of course, for me this game is not nearly as addictive as Dominoes, but it is hard not to enjoy anything involving Super Mario. The goal is to maximize the dominoes you have while forcing your opponent to hold on to the more damaging values.
-- Backgammon – This to me is probably the least appealing of the bunch. It is very hard for any programmer to bring some fun and excitement into such a game, especially when its timelessness does not seem as sturdy as that of Yacht. The game is most basically a race to get to a side of the board. It is based on dice like Yacht but is to an extent largely more dependent on luck (or the programmer’s whim) for winning.
-- Go Fish – Go Fish brings me right back to childhood (but then again, so does Super Mario). This game is basically the electronic equivalent of playing Go Fish with Mario World themed playing cards, but that does not seem to detract from the fun of losing all of your cards and winning the game.
This game pack collection was later re-released as “Mario’s FUNdamentals.” It was developed by Interplay Entertainment Corp in 1995 under the Presage label and was available for DOS, Mac and Windows.
