Ah, gifts.

Well it's spring break for NMU students, and while many of my student peers are escaping to a tropical paradise, I've been making the best of my free time at home, playing Nintendo and having an adventure all my own. I said I'd post something this week, so here goes.

When I arrived at the home of my good friends Kara and Orion last Thursday, they informed me that they had a present for me, and then handed me this.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pizza Power Board Game!

Wow, what a beauty. I mean, there is almost nothing wrong with this game. Everything is there, and the biggest damage is a little bend in part of the box. No biggie. My guess is that this game was used maybe a couple of times before being forgotten in a games closet for years until it was time to clean it out. Since this game is from '87, chances are it hasn't been played in twenty years.

 The game itself is okay. The objective is to use your good guy cards to defeat bad guy cards on the board, collect a certain number of each, and then have a final showdown with the Technodrome. Where the problem comes in is with this thing:

Turtle not included.

To do battle, you have to land the die in the correctly numbered square. To defeat the Technodrome, you need to land a 1, 2, and 3, and you have only four tries to do it. Needless to say, nobody defeated the Technodrome when we played. I got to the point of battling it a couple times, but to no avail. I was lucky if I got two numbers by the fourth flip. We gave up disappointed. However, we were playing on carpet, and when I tried the flipper on a hard wood floor, I was able to accomplish the task with relative ease. I guess it's all about where you try it.

When I was putting all of the pieces into the box after taking the pictures, I found something interesting buried in the bottom. It was an old birthday card.

Somebody gave this to their special nephew as a birthday present and the card was put back into the box and forgotten. The inside reads "... From takeoff to landing! Happy Birthday" and is signed, "Uncle Jack, Aunt Pat, Grandpa." Unfortunately there's no year on the card, and no name of who the card was given to. Judging by the semi-yellowed color of the card, it has indeed been hidden inside the box for some time. Perhaps some of these people are dead and gone by now. Even if that is the case, they bought someone a cool birthday present once, and for that, they'll be remembered. Since it was also a gift for me years later, I'll just pretend that I'm the nephew.

Cost of TMNT Board Game: A gift! Thanks, Kara and Orion!

That's about all I got for now. I gotta get back to my vacation from book learnin'.