All My Children Game

Game Review

Reviewed by David F. Bischoff


Designed by Anne C. Gray
TSR, Inc. P.O. Box 756, Lake Geneva, WI 53147
Released: June, 1985
Catalog No. 1022
Price: $19.95
Complexity: Beginner
Solitaire Suitability: None
**

A game based on a daytime soap opera?

Uh huh. Sure. Next thing you know, we're going to have the Dynasty Game lurking on store shelves. Snake eyes on the dice is Back Stab City. Or how about the Rambo Game. Pass GO, kill 200 gooks.

Merchandising moguls see games as the perfect area to exploit popular shows, popular movies, and popular pop cycles. I can remember playing with some kids an inane board game called ET, based on the movie of the same name. That Christmas season, strolling through the toy store aisles, I was astonished at the number of tie-in games, all with a short shelf life and designed by cynical, sold-out game specialists. And I thought, Gosh, what's wrong with all the other good games these STUPID games are ripped off from? Whether it be Transformers or Masters of the Universe, they all boil down to variations on Parcheesi and Old Maid, mutated and uneasily wed.

Now I've got an admission to make. I'm an All My Children fan. Two years ago, I tuned in at lunch hour, on a whim, got intrigued by a melodramatic cliff-hanger, got hooked by some great characters, became addicted to the endlessly complex plot-lines and back-stories. Ever since I've watched in off and on... alas, mostly on.

So when I got the opportunity to review the game... well, I grabbed it, thinking, TSR? Hey, they might make something truly interesting. After all, they are the people who put character in gaming ... literally. A role-playing game based on my favorite soap. Yeah! I wanna be Tad the Cad, and sleep with all the pretty girls in Pine Valley!

As you might surmise by those two stars riding this review TSR blew it. What you've got is a board connected by movement spaces and places from the show, upon which character markers trek in their efforts to use a hand of dealt cards to point advantage. You accumulate points through a primitive card game appended to this more literal action.

Despite the badly written, hard to understand rules, its all pretty simple- minded. And although theoretically you're supposed to be playing Erica the Bitch or Palmer the Ruthless Millionaire, the characters could be Nancy and Ronald Reagan with equal impact on the role of the die, or the turn of the cards.

And this is where TSR made its mistake.

With only a footnote's worth of possibility for character-interaction they've shortchanged themselves. A better form of a soap-opera game would supply detail notes on characters rather than glib one-paragraph descriptions, which are more windowdressing than anything else. The game can be played by an eight-year-old with little expenditure of brain power. But what kid has 20 bucks to blow on a game?

Each player, of a group from 2-6 members, selects a character to play from 12 available. From a deck of cards consisting of suits and goal-cards, each is dealt seven cards. Goal cards are valued from 5-20 points. Goal cards can only be played in the destination they describe. For example, if you wanted to "SET JESSE UP FOR A DRUG BUST" for 20 points, you'd have to troop with aid of die- throws to the "HUBBARD HOUSE." Once there, the card can be played. Other players then attempt to steal the point value by playing Action Cards of the same suit. The last Action Card played gets the point-value. Once you get a hundred points, you whiz to the All My Children space and win the game.

A curious highlight: If you win a Goal Card describing something nasty done to the character you play, you get double the point value. Which means, if you were Hillary, you'd get forty big ones by seducing yourself on your birthday! Gee, are we having some fun now!

Naturally movement is a variety of pitfalls to delay or encourage your movement. And from time to time you can do nasty things like steal cards from your neighbor.

My main gripe is that the inventors of the game were clearly relying solely on material supplied by the producers. They simply don't capture the flavor of the show.

Just imagine what a truly representative game of All My Children might have: Tad Martin sleeping with both his girlfriend and that cuties sexy mom on the sly. Erica Kane blowing away her handsome boyfriend with a slip of the gun. Jenny Gardner getting drugged and put in a porno film. Daisy Cortlandt discovering that the man she's married is a Nazi war criminal. And most recently, Jeffrey Hunter, mercenary turned chaste monk, rescuing lust object Erica from the demented Adam Chandler who's kidnapped her with the help of his insane twin brother.

Opal Gardner, departed but beloved character, once said in her broad West Virginia accent, "Honey, who needs paranoia when you've got reality?"

Who needs this game when you've got the show?

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© Copyright 1985 by Dana Lombardy.
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