MICROGORIA 77 - Which Witch is Haunting Ghost Castle

In this podcast we take a trip down the more disreputable end of Memory Lane, to the ramshackle edifice that lurks just behind the Great Library of Dreams... The 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat! Inside we uncover the twisted history of a classic board game featuring ghosts, ghouls and witches, known variously over the years as Which Witch, Haunted House and Ghost Castle.

For pictures of the various incarnations of this game visit here   

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HYPNOGORIA 140 - A History of Horror Video Games Part III

In this episode we explore horror in the golden age of the Atari VCS, AKA the Atari 2600, looking at terrifying titles like Haunted House, Alien, Frankenstein and untangling the connection between Donkey Kong and King Kong! 

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HYPNOGORIA 138 - A History of Horror Video Games Part I

This week, we unearth the history of horror in video games. In this episode we explore the birth of video gaming, and take a look at Shark Jaws from Atari, Death Race from Exidy, Hunt the Wumpus on the pc, and Haunted House on the Magnavox Odyssey

DIRECT DOWNLOAD -  A History of Horror Video Games Part I

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THE 'ORRIBLE 'OUSE OF TERRIBLE OLD TAT - The Blob from the Haunted House

Welcome once again my dears to the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat! Incredibly in this septic isle it is actually still summer - yes, I know, a summer that has lasted more than a fortnight! Unprecedented! Well, possibly not, but certainly for such a heatwave one probably has to go back to the 1970s, which coincidentally, is exactly what we are doing once again this week! Don't fret though, while there may be lions, and tigers and flares (oh my!),  there will at least be ice cream! 

Now ice cream itself goes back to the Ancient Greeks, and the ice lolly has been knocking about since the 1920s. However it wasn't until the 1960s that the great icy snack wars began, and these frozen treats were marketed in a host of flavours, with a legion of gimmicks (as we have previously charted in these dubious missives). Now in previous weeks we have looked at how in the early 1970s, lolly makers had hit on the idea of creating characters and mascots that tied to distinct themes to flog their wares to kids. However also around this time, the very way these chilly snacks were being made was changing. And although lollies were in rude health at the time, with a market supporting dozens of competing items, all the same, to paraphrase Oscar Goldman, they could rebuild them, they had the technology, and they could make them better than they were! Better, stronger, and even more gimmicky! 

Now makers of lollies had been fusing different flavours together, and even making lollies in different shapes for quite a while. A recent breakthrough had been creating lollies with an ice cream centre and this would lead to the next leap forward - lollies made completely of ice cream and moulded in amusing shapes! An early hit in this new breed of lolly was the Brr Blobs from Lyons Maid. As the name suggests, the technology wasn't really up to creating a terribly exciting shape other than a roughly humanoid blob with an in-set smiley face, and they only came in ice cream flavour, but they were excitingly different.

More ambitious moulded lollies were to come however, with Lyons Maid launching Dinosaurs in 1974. Priced 8p, these were formed from two pieces of ice cream, one chocolate and one vanilla, and as you might have guessed, were moulded into the shape of a mighty prehistorical saurian. Ok, the moulding wasn't exactly super-detailed, and in fairness they looked more like generic lizardy shapes, as seen by Mr Magoo sans spectacles. But on the upside, the wrappers came with exciting dino-facts on the back, making an attractive series to scoff and collect.

Arch rivals Walls it seems came late to the moulded ice cream lolly game. Possibly the technology wasn't quite good yet, for even Lyons Maid don't appear to have attempted another shaped ice cream lolly in the rest of the '70s. However when Walls did venture into the moulded ice cream arena, they did knock it out of the park. Launching in the early 1980s, the Funny Feet lolly was a deceptively simple and silly idea - an ice cream lolly shaped like a cartoon foot. And this combination of flavour and absurdity proved to be extremely popular, and when all other lollies aimed at kids had passed away, Funny Feet still endured.

However, back in the 1970s, another ice cream lolly is perhaps the most fondly remembered. In July 1973, Lyons Maid launched a lolly destined to live long in the freezer and indeed in our hearts. It didn't have a fancy moulded shape, although it did come with badges. But this lolly did have another trick up its monstrous sleeve. For this lolly was the fondly remembered and much missed Haunted House!  

Now flavour-wise, Haunted House was nothing to write home about - it was just basically milky ice cream frozen onto a stick. But what made this lolly somewhat legendary was the fact each one had a picture of some horror stenciled on the ice cream in edible inks! Drawn in pink, orange, red, green and blue, there were different pictures on the lollies, with the marketing hook being that you wouldn't know which one was on until you unpeeled the wrapper. The full range was as follows - a ghost, a skellington, some bats, a spider in a web, Frankenstein's monster, a witch and something resembling a close relative of the Jelly Terror! Oh yes, Haunted House delivered a lot of fun for the 4p asking price!

And indeed, while its launch mates such as Captain Cody, Freakout and Freckles were forgotten in a summer or two, Haunted House still lived on, and indeed the memory of its simple but spooky fun is still cherished to this day. However Walls had noticed that the kids loved a monster too, and they would produce a rival icy horror... a lolly that came with a stick through its heart...

The 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat #07 - Getting to the Charmed Circle

Welcome back to the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat! Now then, where were we? Oh yes! I remember! I was going to  tell you why Which Witch AKA Haunted House AKA Ghost Castle (to name but a few) was such a brilliant game! Now where is the damn board? 

Now the first ace thing about this game was the fact it featured a three dimensional board. Now this was completely brilliant for several reasons. Firstly, it did what it said on the tin as they say in the adverts.  For there has always been games that sounded incredibly cool, often coming in fancy boxes with amazingly exciting cover art with explosions, and dinosaurs/robots/ pirates galore. However when you got them out the box, you discovered this was yet another exercise in rolling dice and moving dull counters around an arbitrary track - an activity that fell WAAAAAAY short of the exploding dino-pirate-bots fun promised on the box. However this long-lived board was different - you actually got to build a haunted house/ghost castle! And thanks to clever designs and great art on the board, it looked even better in real life than it did on the box! Result!

Better still though, it didn't take thirty years to set up. All the pieces slotted together quickly and easily, and in no time at all you were all set to race your chums round the spooky edifice. Yes, there was none of that taking about half an hour to set the game up for roughly two minutes of gaming fun... Yes, KerPlunk, I AM looking at you! Now, this was a game with exciting moving bits that did all kinds of thrilling things during game play, and unlike similar board games, in this one they all bloody well worked properly too! Yes, you may well hang your head in shame Mouse Trap!

the original Which Witch/Haunted House

So what about the actual game itself? Well at first glance, the game mechanics appear to be very simple - players race each other round the board to get to the end first. Indeed if we are looking for an ancestor for this game, its grandfather is surely that enduring classic Snakes and Ladders. For like that well-loved game of climbing and sliding, Which Witch/Haunted House/Ghost Castle made the race fun by including horrible hindrances and fiendish obstacles. And here is where the magic comes in...

Now the board is divided into four spaces, indeed in the older versions of the game, four rooms in the spooky old house. These were in the vintage incarnation labeled as the Broom Room, the Witchin' Kitchen, the Spell Cell and the Bat's Ballroom. From the 1975  onwards with the revamp New Haunted House, the game would ditch the first room and replace it with an outdoor scene where you had to make your way up to the ghostly castle/haunted house. And while the decors and some of the traps in the rooms would change over the years, in all versions in the final room is a staircase... a staircase to victory! Well, the Charmed Circle to end the witches' spells in the early versions, and the Coffin to close to end the hauntings in later ones at any rate. 

New look! New Haunted House (1975)! 

Of course to get to the end before your competitors was never simply a matter of rolling more on your turn. For as well as moving, you had to draw a card (in the earlier versions) or spin the Spider spinner (Ghost Castle onwards). Now the original deck of cards gave you three possibilities. The card Wanda the Witch Casts a Spell meant your player was transformed into a mouse and could not move, While drawing Glenda the Good Breaks the Spell meant that you were de-mouseyfied and could move again. Later versions, which ditched witches, had a tweak to this - instead of becoming mice, players were scared stiff - signified by a spooky frighted face that slotted over your player piece. 

But most ominously of all was Ghoulish Gertie Drops It Down the Chimney (a phrase that never failed to raise hilarity in our house). This meant you got to the Whammy Ball (in reality a large steel ball bearing) - or a later versions a glowing plastic skull - down the chimney. This ominous object would then rattle down through the core of the spooky edifice and drop out into one of the rooms to trigger a trap or simple to send your piece flying! If you were hit, you had to go back to the start of that particular room. Now as I said, the beauty of this game was that all the cunning traps actually worked rather well, and what's more you could never predict where the deadly missile was going actually to pop out. Hence there was always a chance you might scupper your own progress if your piece was on one of the danger spots in the track through the house.

The classic edition of Ghost Castle! 

Of course all of these elements added up to an extra bonus feature by accident. And that was if you didn't want to play the game, the game board doubled up as a rather fun haunted house playset for any action figures or toy soldiers you fancied pitting against ghosts or witches! Certainly several battalions of Airfix's finest fightin' folk met horrible deaths investigating a certain haunted house in my bedroom...

So then if you are a games designer looking to create something that will still be on the shelves in five decades time, bear in mind the following features. Make your game fun and quick to set up - this guarantees it will be played with frequently. Secondly make the rules simple and quick to learn - there's nothing worse that a cool looking game that requires a Masters degree in Law to interpret the rules. And finally, make it dynamic and as exciting as it sounds! In addition to these first two factors, which are very important in themselves, the crucial thing that this classic board demonstrates, and probably the main reason for its continuing longevity, is that it delivers what the box promises! Something we shall find severely lacking in some of the other toys and games lurking in the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat...

The current version from Goliath Games

The 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat #06 - Which Which Witch?

Welcome once again dear friends to the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat! Do come in, just be careful you don't trip over all those dropped 'h's though. Anyhow this week we are looking at a particular item, or rather a family of items, that I really should have opened this blog series with, as it appeared in the logo illustration for the introductory despatch from the 'Orrible 'Ouse. Look I meant to, honest! But as you can see this place is permanently in a bit of state, and I couldn't get to the boxes for a load of old Doctor Who dolls ok! 

Anywho, this week I've dredged up an old board game that I'm guessing made many an appearance on Christmas lists and birthday requests. It certainly was the star item on one of my childhood missives to Santa, and the Bearded Gent did indeed come through on this one. Now that much anticipated item was a board game called Haunted House, and unlike many other much hankered for toys, this one did not disappoint! And looking back, I think it was my favourite childhood board game, and was played with for many many years on a regular basis.

And my experiences with Haunted House is clearly not in any way unusual, for this is a game whose mere mention triggers a wave of nostalgia in several generations. For this is a board game that has never been long off the shelves, and indeed, it's still available in toy shops to this very day. In fact it's now only a few years shy of being 50 years old! I reckon it's only the fact that this board game has gone through several rebrandings that has prevented it from being recognised as a true classic.  So then, let's have a quick wander through its long history... 

The spooky treat first appeared in 1970 in the US, a creation of pioneering board game makers, Milton Bradley (later known as MB Games), under the name Which Witch. It initially came in a huge square box the size of the board itself, but was reissued a year later in a more familiar, slimmer rectangular box that was way easier to get in the toy cupboard, thanks to it now having a more convenient folding board. Now the same year as the folding board made its debut, 1971, it made its first transatlantic appearance, released in the UK by Denys Fisher. And while the game pieces, rules and box art were identical, it was now called Haunted House. European versions began to appear soon after too - in Spain it became Embrujada (Haunted), in France it was Le Manoir Hanté (The Haunted Manor), in German it was Spukschloss (Haunted Castle), and in Italy it was Castello Incanto (Castle of Spells) and also Brivido (Shiver). 

In all its incarnations, Which Witch/Haunted House sold steadily for many years. In 1975, there was the first evolution of the game, with Denys Fisher releasing a rejigged version entitled New Haunted House. Reflecting the new moniker, there was new box art, and the titular witches disappeared from the game, being replaced with ghosts, and one of the game's gadgets, a broom trap becoming a falling knight. In the mid '80s the game evolved again, with a few more tweaks to the mechanics and pieces, and it actually became in two distinct versions.

The more short-lived one, which appeared in toy stores in 1986, saw the now venerable game re-skinned to be a tie-in to the Real Ghostbusters cartoon series, and was called, unsurprisingly, The Real Ghostbuster Game. Needless to say this spin-off edition did not last long. However its other '80s incarnation, released the year before in 1985, proved to be far more tenacious! Ghost Castle from MB Games, brought some more tweaks to the game, several of witch, sorry, which had been first seen in some of those European versions. The main changes were the tower on the board becoming a more durable plastic, a deck of cards becoming a spinner, and a ball being replaced with a skull! A plastic one, not a real one I should point out...  Anyway, since then the game has more or less stuck to its new name of Ghost Castle, and indeed the game is still available to this very day, with the current version being issued by Goliath Games. 

So why has this game been so popular over the years? Well, we'll be bringing out the board and setting up the haunted house in all its glory next week to take a proper look at the gameplay. And along the way we'll note some of the changes and evolutions it has undergone in nearly five decades of providing spooky thrills!