June 25, 2004

Origins in 1984

I've been reading Mike Sugarbaker's comments on the Origins game convention that's going on right now and reminiscing about the one and only time I got to visit Origins, in the summer of 1984 between high school graduation and starting college. It was in Dallas that year and my buddy Todd Young and I went in together for gas and a hotel room. I played in a couple of tournaments, making it into the finals for the Illuminati tourney and winning a bunch of Steve Jackson games swag.

The tourney opportunity aside, what is great about a gaming convention is the dealer's room, where the big companies (at the time TSR, SSI, and Games Workshop) have their expensive multi-display extravaganzas against the folding card table of the lone developer.

Todd and I bought a game at that convention that I've subsequently lost and would love to find again. It was a space combat game in which the two major components were the rules and a specially designed protractor. You could use any size piece of paper as the "board" for the game, and the protractor was used to determine how far you could move and how fast you could turn your spaceship depending on your ship's stats. I've looked in vain for the game since then, and had no luck finding it, or a title for it.

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5 Comments

Hi Glen,

A lot of lone developer games end up in the dust bin of history, but I have been involved in a couple of different independent space combat games the past couple of years. If you're interested, here are my recommendations.

I don't know which part of the game you described interested you the most (cool toys or simplicity). If it was the simplicity of play, I would highly recommend Starmada (www.mj12games.com or http://www.lclark.edu/~drake/starmada/maxburn.html) which is my current favorite. If it was the cool toys, then I would recommend Attack Vector (http://www.adastragames.com/products/adastra/av.html) which is a much more complicated simulation of 3D ship combat.

I'm sorry I can't remember the game you described, but I hope you can find it. Even if you cannot, the last five years has seen a tremendous influx of new board games that have really revived the genre's popularity. I was certainly surprised at the number of great games out there (www.boardgamegeek.com) when my group decided to take a break from D&D, we stumbled onto so many good games that we really haven't gone back to role-playing....

Cheers,
Mark

I got a title lead on this game from a friend who played something similar, if not the same game, in the early 1980s: The Space War Campaign Game. If anyone knows more about that...

I think my attraction to the game was the protractor and the fact that your "board" could be any size piece of paper. I also remember that the game had some interesting dynamics in the sense of how you could design your spaceship.

You are right about the amazing number of great board games that have been published in the last ten years: Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Puerto Rico, Tikal. And that's just to mention the ones I've played.

i too remember this game..... i remember sitting down for a demo of it... doubtful if i still own it though...question for you...in what year was origins hosted in detroit???

According to several pages on the Internet, Origins was held in Detroit in 1978. It may have been held there in other years, but that was the only date I saw confirmed.

this origins was actually in detroit that i attended and it was at cobo hall... i really dont think it was the 1978 convention..that would have made me 10 years old.... can anyone find any information about origin locations after that

thanks
rick

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