Russell Grant's Zodiac Game Russell Grant is still a fat astrologer, much loved on breakfast TV in the Eighties. This game (made by Freeman-Hawkins Games) includes flyers for his 1989 Horoscope books and a peak rate phone line and Astrolog, your computer generated chart. The game itself includes a quarterboard, showing the 12 constellations of the Zodiac and the wheel, discs for the planets, moon & sun, a pack of Trait cards, a pack of Star cards and a pack of Sun cards. Also there are 6 copies of the little rule book and a set of pads for scoring. Missing are the 10 & 12 sided dice used in the game. You have to win cards or eliminate other players to win. There's a short or long game; you deal out cards on the board next to the star signs, read them out and try to guess people's birth sign.
Verdict I'll say when I've played it.

Heads & Tails © 1981 Ideal Games. This a simple strategy game, with a plastic tray holding big plastic coins in a 4 x 4 pattern. The coins are meant to look Roman, with a head wreathed in laurels on one side and a beast on the other. there are 8 gold and 8 silver coins. To win you must get 3 coins in a row with the same side up, heads or tails. The trick is, as you take turns to place your coins in the tray, you flip one of your opponent's coins over, spoiling it's plans. If you think you've won, your opponent puts their next coin down and flips yours.
Verdict I'll say when I've played it.

Save The President! Jack Jaffe's International Espionage Game, in which you must prevent the President being assassinated. You take the role of agents of the CIA, KGB, NSA etc trying to kill or save the newly elected President as his motorcade takes him to be sworn in and back to the White House. An unusual game, we couldn't play it properly, because it was missing the rules! One of trials of buying games at charity shops. The game is copyrighted 1984 to Jack Jaffe, and includes all sorts of tokens and cards. But the interesting thing about it is the design of the board. A jigsaw board, it has an extraordinary pattern of lines and stops that the agents move on, lining up to shoot the Pres or each other. Very odd indeed, but it set me thinking of how to use unusual tessellations as a game board. MC Esher ran one tessellation into another, perhaps that would work with a board game? The game box says Games For Pleasure Ltd , London N12 8PY and the box plugs Jack's other games; Libido, Persona, Master Builder. He also started SIGMA in 1975 (Society of Inventors of Games & Mathematical Attractions) and remains a leading member!
Verdict I'll say when I've got the full set of rules!

The Game Of Quotations Made by Milton Bradley © 1987 it has 395 cards, 55 are Playing cards and the rest are category cards based on quotes by famous types. You must get rid of your playing cards by answering True/False, Buss Words, Quote Vote etc. A nice, simple party game, well researched but soulless.
Verdict Fine if you like quiz games.

Give Us A Clue © 1986 Thames Television but this a Paul Lamond Game. They seem to produce simple games themed on TV shows, current trends and characters. Personally, I've learnt to avoid Paul Lamond games, they are not too deep, under-developed. This one is a version of Give Us A Clue, a long running TV gameshow of...charades! In the box you get 2 big six-dice, a sand timer that sticks, and a big box of cards giving the usual titles of films, books etc.
Verdict Fine if you want a game of charades. Similar games are widely available.

Telling Lies A Game Of Honesty & Deception. © 1987 Intuitive Marketing, made by Paul Lamond Games. Another of the 80's party type games, that is, one idea, marketing, no game. There are 336 Telling Lies cards, 56 players cards; Tell the Truth or Tell a Lie. Players take it in turns to read a question and answer it according to the Truth/Lie card they draw. The other players must question them and then decide if the player is lying or not. get it right and you gain 1 point. Get it wrong and you might lose 1 point. Typical questions are; You witness a robbery. The robber is your boss's son. Do you forget what you saw?. Or; You own a VCR. Do you make copies of video tapes?. Or; Have you ever considered suicide?
Verdict Trivial Pursuits has a lot to answer for. Typical lame 'party' game.

PSI Psychology Slander Intuition. As seen of the ITV show PSI. Yeah? Never saw it. © 1987 Steve Knight, Paradigm Games. A heavy box contains a jigsaw-board, 7 counters of the 7 deadly sins, 500 cards, 200 being Psi questions and 300 being personality cards in a dispenser. The board has a triangular stepway drawn as MC Esher would. The rules are humourous but simple. One player takes a personality card (e.g. A TV soap star -Sue Ellen, an Absent Friend, someone known to all players), and the next players take PSI cards (If you were a writing implement, which would you be? If you were a TV channel etc?) The player who guesses the identity soonest moves their piece, and the quizzed player moves too. The better the clues you give, the sooner they guess, the more you move. Guess wrong and you go back. Also, there are reverse cards; everyone else knows the personality and you must quiz them. First round to the finish line wins. Other paradigm games include "Headliners" a quiz game, "September" a strategy game, "Timber" an action game & "Ivan's Hinge" a puzzle.
Verdict Original styling of another party game. But there is some proper research into this, including a psychology test. Quite amusing.

ESP another Paradigm game, is an odd sort of gambling game. You get a jigsaw-board, gambling chips (cardboard), banking chips and rotating disk selectors which show the symbols used in ESP tests, curved lines , stars, squares etc in different colours. Each player selects a shape in secret and you bet on what you think has been chosen, using your ESP skills to help you decide.
Verdict OK but it's a complex packaging of an old game.

And now, onward to yet more games reviewed; Bought 03