One look at the iconic image of the circular playing piece with six pie shaped wedges in different colors brings back memories of the board game Trivial Pursuit.
This board game was released in the early eighties, and its popularity peaked in 1984 when over 20 million games were sold. I had a love-hate relationship with the game. To fully play it out and declare a winner, you had to get all the pie pieces and then answer a final question in the center of the board. And your opponents could choose the color of the final question. When playing in a group, this was not as big of a deal, since usually more people equaled a broad range of knowledge. But when playing solo, it was clear to my opponents by the end of the game that I liked Pink (entertainment), Orange (sports and leisure) and Brown (arts and literature). So my final question was usually doomed to be Green (science and nature) or Blue (geography). At least the answers were multiple choice, so there was the possibility of a lucky guess winning the game.
Win or lose it was a fun game, and I actually felt like I learned a lot while playing it. Sometimes it was encouraging to realize how many random facts were stored in my brain.
Trivial Pursuit is still around today and has a variety of new versions available that reflect the way culture has changed since the 80s. The one that stands out to me is the Trivial Pursuit Mobile Phone Game. It's interesting to me that the whole basis of the game Trivial Pursuit was the ability to remember random facts, but now in the age of: "Let me Google that for you," are we still memorizing facts anymore? The answer to almost any question is at our fingertips within seconds thanks to the internet and mobile devices.
Did you play the original version of Trivial Pursuit back in the 80s? What was your favorite color/topic? Do you still enjoy playing board games? What are your current favorites? Do you think our ability to memorize facts is fading, since so much information is readily available online? Email, Twitter, Facebook... do you ever feel burnt out by trivial information overload?
6 comments:
I liked it, but don't have anyone who would play with me. I'm trying to visit all the A-Z Challenge blogs this month. My alphabet is at myqualityday.blogspot.com
yup I really enjoyed that game although I rarely won it - pipped by that last question:) no-one to play it with now and not sure my memory is up to it any more:(
am wandering around visitng so many folk head spinning if you want to drop by I am number 80 did you ever kiss a frog
Haha, I LOVED this game. Sucked at it, but it's amazing. Though Slip n' Slides are even better. Great post and happy A-Z blogging!
I'm not a fan of board games but I love TP. Blue is my fave category. I can remember playing marathon games, night after night, my junior year of college (84/85). I played so often that I had a lot of the card answers memorized. I am a trivia buff anyway.
PS If you remember the comedian Rich Hall, he used to do a thing called "Sniglets". He made up one for TP. A "Piewagon" is the round thing for the slices of coloured TP pie.
We played Bible Trivia when I was a kid, but I was always curious what the real deal was like. =] You're so right about our no longer needing to remember trivial information with the Internet literally at our fingertips. Now we have more brain space for other endeavors, right?
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