Space Crusade - Shut Up & Sit Down

Paul’s Nostalgia Trip

Imagine Paul sat by a crackling fire, speaking calmly to you in his warm, academic, almost mahogany voice…

In fifty years time I shall be a very wrinkly and very old man, but all the stats suggest I’ll still be very much alive and, I imagine, probably still playing board games too. I imagine myself sat with the odd youngster now and then, perhaps grandchildren, great nephews, or just
the odd whippersnapper who has tossed a coin in my cup and told me to get a job, but whoever it is I’m sure they’ll ask me what board games were like in my day.

“Board games?” I’ll ask, with a Santa-like twinkle in my eye, a Twainish bounce in my crazy-old-dude hair, “Oh, well it was all very different back then. They didn’t self-assemble, for a start. In fact, it was all something like this…”

“Why is everything going wobbly?!” the Dickensian sprog would cry. “I am afeared!”

“Worry not, tis but a flashback! A flashback to… TORPEDO RUN.”

For me, writing and filming SU&SD is an exercise that frequently swings between excitement and painful nostalgia, a bit like a pendulum that strikes you in the balls on every arc. Or like one of those Newton’s Cradles that strikes you in the balls on every arc. Or like pretty much anything that strikes you in the balls regularly.

The problem I have is that every other game I want to talk about is a
game I don’t have. More than a few of them are games that I did have, but don’t have any more. It’s a sad state of affairs that all I have left of HeroQuest is the board, the dice and so many fading memories.

Well, I have even less left of Space Crusade, Games Workshop’s science fiction counterpart to HeroQuest, released a year later. I barely remember the components, or even how to play the game. Today, looking through old photos, I’ve been trying to remember and trying to avoid that metaphorical whack in the sack.

Paul’s Nostalgia Trip

Floating Round My Tin Can

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