Blast Off

[StressFractureMan]

As a kid, and being a child of the space-age, I really loved Wadington's 'Blast Off' (1969) and would play it endlessly with my mates. It seemed to capture everything that you would encounter as a real astronaut: launching, refueling, docking, orbital velocities, trajectory calculations, etc.



More pics

You can imagine how chuffed I was recently to pay-more-than-anyone-else-on-ebay to secure a copy of this game. After a few days it arrived, smelling of 30 years in the attic. Read through the instructions ... hmmm, don't remember it being this complicated! Still, nothing like playing a game to get the rules sorted. Set it up that weekend - had a couple of fellow game-players over for the event - and off we blasted. The initial excitment was soon replaced by disappointment as I realised that Blast-Off was tedious beyond belief . It seemed to be purely a game of chance and endless orbiting and chasing. After half an hour the game was aborted by common consent, packed away, and taken to the charity shop around the corner for some other poor sod to rediscover.

[sixtyten]

Lol.
Nostalgia is not what it used to be


nice post

[Wil]

I had Blast Off back when it first came out (when I was about 6/7) and it was always too complicated for me. Every now and again we'd pull it out with the intentions of playing it properly but never did. I loved the idea of it and the little capsules but as for playing it...

[Emettman]

Blast-Off was not that complicated, as I recall, but it suffered from a frequent problem: almost zero interaction between the players. If it wasn't your turn, you did nothing.

Apart from occasionally knocking people off the moon, there was very little you could "do" to anyone else.
Many boardgames have nostalgia value without much play value.

Even the magnificently bit equipped "Railroader" had this. Even the dynamite placing was almost automatic: whoever it would hurt most, unless a personal vendetta was in operation.