How 51 Clubhouse Games really lives up to its name
Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics (2020)
Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics (2020)
Ordinarily for these pieces, I would write some self-indulgent tripe about something that had happened in my life, and then haphazardly link it to the video game I want to talk about that week. You know how it goes.
But as we’re looking at 51 Worldwide Classics today, successor to the DS’s brilliant 42 All-Time Classics, I realise that I really don’t have much room to manoeuvre in terms of word count; I want to give you the lowdown on each of the included games, and 51 is a lot to describe, so it’s best we get right to it. Hold onto your top hats, and step with me into the Nintendo Switch’s new clubhouse.
First there’s Mancala, a bead-capturing game that’s as old as the hills. In real life, you could probably sprinkle the beads onto the board, Salt Bae style. But for the video game, you’re just going to have to wave the Joy-Con with some imagined flair.
Next is Dots and Boxes, a game I’m sure we’ve all played on pen-and-paper, many moons ago. You draw a line and try to form boxes. Usually, unless you’re blind, it goes back and forth like this until one person is forced to leave the door open for the other, who proceeds to get 20 boxes in a row and smokes you. Still, it’s always a bit of fun.
Yacht Dice may be a nice way of getting around the copyrighted Yahtzee name. But I can’t say I’ve ever been too impressed by the idea of a cross between dice and poker - especially when you can’t physically throw the dice yourself.
Four-in-a-Row is another infringement dodger, this time on Connect Four, one of those kids’ games that’ll get adults fuming. If you don’t go first in this game, you’ve probably already lost.
Hit and Blow I’m a big fan of. You might know it better as Mastermind, a game where you guess the combination and colour of four different pegs. It’s fun to play two-player, either co-operatively or competitively. You can play these games solo of course, but who’d want to do that?
Nine Men’s Morris is a game that’s about five minutes of set-up for about thirty seconds of payoff, and it quickly becomes boring. Try not to let your sex life become like Nine Men’s Morris, in other words.
Hex is a strategic game where you try to connect two lines by laying down hexagons, while preventing your opponent from doing the same. I seem to always lose this one quite badly, which really makes me feel intelligent.
Then there’s Checkers, which I’m sure you know. Although the UK is more likely to call it Draughts, which makes it sound like a game about opening windows. It’s up to you whether you want to keep all your kings in the back row.
Hare and Hounds is kind of like those thought exercises about grain, chicken and foxes and bringing them across the river. What happens to the hare if you fail? Well, Jason Statham tells you that in Snatch, so go watch that instead.
Gomoku looks like the classic, complex game of Go, but it ain’t Go. It’s really more of a Connect Five type of game, but you don’t capture each other’s pieces like in Othello. Or is it Reversi? I’m never quite sure.
Just as 99% of people buy baseball bats with no intention of ever playing the sport, so 99% of all Dominoes sold exist solely to be tipped over in a cool fashion. I wouldn’t bother with the real game of Dominoes. After all, you’d have to go down to the Darby and Joan club to see people playing dominoes in this day and age. And God knows if I’ll ever make another reference as obscure and outdated as that.
As for Chinese Checkers, it adds a bit of geometry to the game of checkers, which may not be to your taste. Also remember that they don’t have kings in China, and I don’t think you can turn your pieces into Chairmen, either.
Ludo is the vintage board game that we all played in our youthful days. Didn’t we? Well, it’s just dice rolls, and trying to get your pieces home. These days, the board games I play seem to be slightly more complex, centred around trading ore for sheep, or taking the Tōkaidō road to Tokyo. Try it once, I suppose.
Backgammon will eventually depress you, like any game that leaves you at the dice’s mercy. It probably sets you apart as a lady or gent if you know the rules, so at least consider learning them, before turning your back on Backgammon with extreme prejudice.
Renegade is the Othello game I was waiting for. Even the Easy AI makes its moves in a nanosecond, but you can shake your Switch and throw all the pieces off if you get enraged. That makes it worth some points.
I won’t need to explain Chess to you. You’re probably best off playing it on your mobile app these days really, but you could have some fun against the 51 Clubhouse Games AI. The Hard AI will demolish you, but the Easy AI is funny in how much it hates its queen, and sacrifices her in a hurry.
Shogi and Mini Shogi are essentially Japanese forms of chess. I don’t see why you’d bother, when you’ve got international chess as well as a bit of Mahjong around. Speaking of Mahjong, that’s included in 51 Clubhouse Games as well, and if you haven’t played it before, it’s more addictive than you might think.
The only thing I know about Hanafuda is that Nintendo used to make Hanafuda cards, and you can unlock a Mario-themed set in this game, actually. Apart from that, it seems to just be oriented around putting together pretty Japanese pictures, you know, cherry blossoms, Mount Fuji, Shinto temples and all that. Give me Tanks and Battleship any day.
We’ve got another court case dodger in Last Card, which you’ll know much better as UNO. Well, there was a properly endorsed UNO on the Xbox Live Arcade way back when, and there’s also, you know, the real game - both are much better alternatives.
If I was going to beat the house and go home rich, I’d probably best fancy my chances at doing it through Blackjack. It’s an easy game, and you probably know it - take 2 cards, get close to 21, and if the waitresses have brought you enough free drinks, you may have enough Dutch courage to double down.
I know it’s been around for a long time, but do you remember the big Texas Hold’em craze in the 2000s? It was played everywhere, it was constantly on the telly. Even James Bond was playing it. I still probably prefer simple old five-card draw, but a bit of Hold’em is always fun, so long as you know what the percentages are.
President is that card game where you have to keep playing sequentially higher ranking cards, and if the person before you plays pairs or trips, you need to do so as well. What’s great about this game is that if you do badly, you become the Scum, and you even have to do the shuffling and dealing. You must also hand the President your best card every round. How unfair is that?
Sevens is a card game I always liked, because you can hold out on others and really wind them up. Well, only humans get wound up, not computer AI. And you can only play this in multiplayer using two Switches, which holds true for many of the card games as well, for obvious reasons.
Speed isn’t about a bus that can’t slow down, unfortunately - it’s just a game of throwing down cards quickly. Again, a bit of fun, but it lacks the real life ability of slapping your opponent’s hand, blowing their cards off the table, or other such inventive strategies.
Matching is just the simple game of matching a pair of cards together. You’ve probably played it yourself at some stage, when you were really, really bored.
War is good fun, actually. It’s luck-based, but you just have to draw a higher card than your opponents, and the stakes get higher if you both reveal the same number. The game is a lot quicker in real life, mind.
Takoyaki is a mostly luck-based card game, but can also mean diced octopus balls. I know which one sounds more appealing. Meanwhile Pig's Tail may have one of the most ridiculous soundtracks I ever heard in a game. Other than that, it’s a luck-based game where you just have to hope you don’t draw the wrong suit.
Golf would have worked better if it was crazy golf, like the old online Flash games. But using a driver in a top-down view is just silly. And I thought Billiards would have a bit of motion control, like the cool Billiards game on Wii Play all those years ago. And yeah, I never thought I’d be clamouring for motion controls either. Still, even with buttons and analogue sticks, 8-Ball and 9-Ball are always good fun, even if you can’t do jump shots.
Bowling is one of those pursuits that I detest in real life, but it’s always good fun in games. It won’t beat Wii Sports, but it does invoke some motion control. That said, I never seem to be able to throw the ball correctly; seems the ball is glued to my hand. Then, the game warns me not to swing so hard. When the ball does eventually start flying, it usually gives me a completely unearned strike. Well, that’s better than it rolling in the gutter every time.
Ahh, the old pub classic, Darts. I’ve seen enough episodes of Bullseye to know which way to throw a dart, as well. Again, you’ll need to stand up for this game, and there’s no consistency - no two throws of yours will be alike. But it’s fun with a pal, if you can both laugh at yourselves.
I’d never heard of Carrom before playing this, but it’s a good laugh actually. It’s like billiards with your fingers, flicking coins into pockets. For whatever reason, there’s a queen as well. Finger the queen and pocket the coins, old boy.
Toy Tennis is a bit like a foosball version of tennis, even more watered down than Wii Sports Tennis. Moving your toy posho around the court reminds me of shifting gears in a manual car. You probably shouldn’t bother.
Toy Soccer, which should have been called Toy Football, is a real missed opportunity. They should have just given us a version of foosball, but instead, you control all the players at once, and you move them up and down the field rather than switching between defenders, attackers and midfield. And the ball keeps getting stuck too.
You may have heard of Curling, that odd winter game where they bring sweeping brushes onto the ice. Obviously a nonsense of a “sport”, and the Toy version included here isn’t much cop either.
Toy Boxing is a bit of a laugh because it’s essentially Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. The game wants you to employ a bit of strategy and guard every so often. But like most fighting games, if you just mash the punch button, you’ll usually get a result.
You’ll get some fun out of Toy Baseball. My missus wipes the floor with me every time, though. Must be because she was born with the innate advantage of being American. But even though she prefers hockey, the tables turn badly on her in Air Hockey, a game that’s always a great laugh.
I was thrilled to see Slot Cars being included - reminds me of the old Scalextric sets I used to have. This is my favourite game on the collection, and there’s several tracks too. If you have three more Switches just lying around, you can even combine them to make one big track.
I don’t know what it is about Fishing. When it’s a side-distraction, like in Ocarina of Time or Animal Crossing, it’s great. When it’s the main focus of things, it’s dreadful. Battle Tanks and Team Tanks is more like it. Manoeuvre your tank around the arena and blow away the opposition. Simple, good clean fun, and you can really get into it.
Point the Joy-Con at the screen and smash the targets in the Shooting Gallery. They had this game in Wii Play as well, and it’s OK, but lacks variety. A bit like my descriptions of all these games, eh?
6-Ball Puzzle is a falling block puzzle that’s a bit like Columns, except even less fun. And I thought Sliding Puzzle would be like the one on the DS game, where you had wooden blocks to slide around in order to move a designated piece to the exit. Unfortunately, it’s more like that rushing water pipeline game, except here you have to clear a path for an ignorant turtle. It’s a choker, honestly.
Onto the solitaires. Mahjong Solitaire is a matching pair game really, seeing you work your way down stacks of mahjong tiles without landing in an unwinnable position. I wouldn’t really bother, if I were you.
You surely already know Klondike Solitaire, although we called it Patience round my way. I’ve must have played ten thousand games of it. I’ve even played it on airplanes. Despite that, I don’t think I’ve ever won a game of Draw 3.
Old-timers among you will surely Spider Solitaire on your PC, from the days before broadband internet. It’s probably one of those games that you could only ever play digitally, since it requires about 20 decks of cards
And finally, I guess because 52 is a much more significant number than 51, there’s a Piano thrown in at the end. The game offers you the chance to play a recital, which sounds great, but the piano’s only got about six notes, and needs to be controlled via touch-screen. Don’t be expecting to play Für Elise on it, in other words.
So there you have it, 51 Worldwide Classics on Nintendo Switch. Like any compilation, you can probably eliminate half of them on account of them being clag, but that leaves a good 25 games for you and a pal to enjoy. They also offered online play, but since this is a Nintendo game, I think we both know how that went.
Given that many of these games have been around for centuries, it wouldn’t really be right if I was to come on here and rubbish them. Still, one undeniable advantage that this game offers: once you buy it, you can save yourself an awful lot of storage space by throwing out your old backgammon and chess sets. You should probably hang on to that grand piano, though.
16 January 2024