Is Munchkins the greatest game Steve Jackson ever wrote?

Steve Jackson is a legendary US game designer. His many hit titles include : Car Wars, Ogre, Hacker, Illuminati and Munchkins. Munchkins is a card based role playing game, but it is very funny. It comes with many different expansion packs that include space adventures, vampires and even the world of Cthulhu.

In researching Steve Jackson's long career in gaming, I was not able to verify a story I recalled about his first game, Car Wars. If you can find the original Car Wars products, you will see that Car Wars was at that time a shared trademark that belonged to Steve Jackson and to Texas Instruments. The explanation I heard at the time, back in 1980, was that Steve Jackson was employed by Texas Instruments around the time he came up with the first version of the Car Wars game. And so when he started making money from selling the game and left TI, they found out about the game. So TI then went to Federal Court to assert their ownership interest in the intellectual property that he created when on the clock for them. But again, I couldn't find any stories about this out on the interwebs, so who knows? Maybe it didn't really happen that way.

Whatever the case, you should buy Munchkins games and play them. You will love it! You can buy them here.

Rio Grande Games

Here is their most recent press release.

We have had a good and busy start in 2010, and we thank you all for your continued support. This is the first of many newsletters I plan for 2010.

Since the beginning of the year, we released several new and reprinted games including Factory Manager, Albion, Galaxy Trucker, Galaxy Trucker BIG expansion, Big Box Carcassonne 2, Chicken Cha Cha Cha, Dominion Seaside, Space Alert, Dominion: Intrigue, Piratissimo, Race for the Galaxy: Rebel vs Imperium, Power Grid, Saint Petersburg, and Carcassonne: the Castle. In the next few weeks, we will have: Elfenland, Thurn & Taxis, Carcassonne (without the River expansion), Carcassonne: Bridges, Castles, and Bazaars, Dominion: Alchemy, Race for the Galaxy: Brink of War, and Dominion.

We also will soon have a new promo card for Dominion, the “Stash” card and will also be offering sets of blank cards for the creative among you. As soon as we have details on how to get these, I will let you all know.

Puerto Rico is the greatest game ever!

If you love board games (and if you are here, then you should, because this is a board game blog) then you really need to check out Puerto Rico, distributed in the US by Rio Grande Games.

The great thing about Puerto Rico is it so perfectly embodies the great line from the LA punk band X, "life is the game that moves as you play it." The is completely true in Puerto Rico as the game play varies from turn to turn. At the start of each turn, the players chose the roles they will play in that turn, and then you go around in order, doing their steps. As there are seven possible roles, and the game can play well with just three players, you can see the opportunity for each turn to be different from the last.

Another interesting thing is the idea that you are playing a game based on the colonization of the island nation of Puerto Rico by Spain, that was produced by a German company. Ravensburger has been producing games in Germany since 1883, and this is one of their finest titles.

If you would like a fun evening with friends and family, why don't you try it? You can buy it here.