Wednesday, June 27, 2012
Game Board of the Week: Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (Milton Bradley; 1979))
award-winning creator of Enter The House Between and author of 32 books including Horror Films FAQ (2013), Horror Films of the 1990s (2011), Horror Films of the 1980s (2007), TV Year (2007), The Rock and Roll Film Encyclopedia (2007), Mercy in Her Eyes: The Films of Mira Nair (2006),, Best in Show: The Films of Christopher Guest and Company (2004), The Unseen Force: The Films of Sam Raimi (2004), An Askew View: The Films of Kevin Smith (2002), The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film & Television (2004), Exploring Space:1999 (1997), An Analytical Guide to TV's Battlestar Galactica (1998), Terror Television (2001), Space:1999 - The Forsaken (2003) and Horror Films of the 1970s (2002).
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As a boy I got this game in 1979 and I always liked the artwork of these type games.
ReplyDeleteSGB
Hi SGB,
DeleteI also loved the art work for these 1970s era games. This Buck Rogers one is a little funny, however, since King Draco is right there at the center of action and the character hardly appeared at all in the film! Crazy...
best,
John
Hm. This looks a great deal like that Space: 1999 board game. Interesting.
ReplyDeleteI've long had the impression Draco was intended to be more of a presence on the Buck Rogers TV show (as I understand it, the movie was filmed as a pilot, then released theatrically before working its way back to TV), but for some reason the character was dropped in favor of the recurring Ardala appearances. That was probably a wise decision...
Hi Jason,
DeleteYou'r absolutely right. The Buck game does look much like the Space: 1999 game I featured last week.
I agree with your thought process that Ardala makes a more -- shall we say more...appealing? -- presence than Joseph Wiseman's King Draco. It's not like the series needed him, but I find it odd that the action figures and game both include someone who is reduced to nothing more than a cameo in the movie.
Somewhere out there, I suspect there is more to the Draco role, some footage we haven't seen. If so, I'd sure love to see it.
Great comment!
best,
John