Flip the Table
Most board game shows focus on the latest-and-greatest, or time-tested classics. We have taken it upon ourselves to comb our local charity shops and salvage stores for the other stuff...join us as we review cheesy, weird, and obscure board games for your entertainment.

Come join us in a world where stone warriors protect the city by night...and everyone kinda sounds like they belong on the Enterprise. We're playing Gargoyles: The VCR Board Game; a VHS pack-in with the Disney movie which was a special bonus feature long before DVDs brought us hours of deleted scenes. Spin and move your way to the Xanatos building within 20 minutes to defeat Jonathan Frakes before he unleashes horrible robot doppelgangers on the city of New York. If nobody makes it to the finish, the city is destroyed. OR IS IT?!?!?! Download now and join the adventure!

Direct download: FlipTheTable033.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 8:45pm EDT

The Flip the Table gang didn't get invited to too many parties in our formative years...but now, we can see what that would have been like thanks to the early 90's celebration preparation simulator Party Mania! This Nightmare-style VHS game is a race against the clock as you and your friends busily attempt to complete your chores and perfect your hair and outfit in time for the Keller Twins' huge bash. If you're lucky, one or more players will be ready in time for the party...too slow, and you'll be at home with your lame family and the nerdiest kids in school. Earn Mom's approval and manipulate your friends as you roll, move, and charade your way to victory. Does Party Mania flow through our veins? Download now to find out! 

Direct download: FlipTheTable032.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:49pm EDT

Some would say that, prior to the 2000's, "Mashups" were an imperfect art form. Case in point: the 1996 hoops drama Space Jam, in which basketball megastar/baseball notsomuch Michael Jordan teams up with the Looney Tunes gang for an interstellar basketball throwdown. This week, the Flip the Table panel immerses themselves in the Space Jam experience by suiting up and taking it to the hole in Space Jam: Michael Jordan's Cosmic Court. In this Plinko-based basketball simulator, four competing Michael Jordans race to be the first to hit the ultimate SLAM DUNK to defeat the Monstars and rescue Bugs and the gang from the horrific Monstars. Without Bill Murray around to pick up the slack, can anybody save this game? Plus: DOUBLE SHAWARMA! Don't miss it!

Direct download: FlipTheTable031.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 10:32pm EDT

Set condition one throughout the ship! It's time to play Battlestar Galactica...but not the good kind like you want. We're covering the Parker Brothers edition of BSG from 1978, where four alert Viper pilots engage in an exciting, tense, and dramatic training mission to drag the husk of a crippled Cylon raider back to the Galactica for inspection or something. Spin and move your way through space as you attempt to use your awesomely destructive laser weapons in a non-lethal manner to keep your fellow pilots from bringing home a busted toaster. How does this compare to the modern edition? You'll have to listen to find out. Though you've probably already cracked that case.

Direct download: FlipTheTable030.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:28pm EDT

Take a little bit of 90210, add a splash of Voltron, and sprinkle in a little kaiju mayhem, and you get the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers; the early 90's phenomenon which taught us that all problems can be solved with multicolored spandex and increasingly larger robots. This episode, Flip the Table plays the eponymous board game by Milton Bradley from 1994, where players mow through an army of Putty Patrollers to earn the right to form the Megazord and take on King Sphinx. Only the ranger who strikes the final blow can win the game. It's got dice chucking, memory elements, bluffing, and resource management...but does the game feel like an epic battle, or recycled, poorly dubbed stock footage? Only one way to find out...

Direct download: FlipTheTable029.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:09pm EDT

One cannot master the art of Ninjitsu without the most important maneuver in the martial artist's arsenal...what the masters call, loosely translated, "Roll and Move." That's why we're playing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pizza Power game from 1987! In this game, players pick their Turtle of choice and battle an endless army of punks, Shredders and Krangs until they earn the right to enter the Technodrome and defeat the Bad Guys once and for all. However, mere basic arithmetic skills are not sufficient to take down the Foot Clan...you'll need to use the Battle Flipper to land a die in the right plastic compartment to collect your trophy and prevent your Good Guys from fleeing to the discard pile. Does a board game with roll and move combined with dexterity elements work as well as a pizza with peanut butter and sauerkraut? Then, will our newly developed Ninja skills with the Battle Flipper be enough to prevent us from losing all our points in the Battle of Wits? Get in the Turtle Van...and set a course for fun! Just watch out for the electric seaweed.

Direct download: FlipTheTable028.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:44pm EDT

This episode, we play perhaps the most popular and well-known game we've ever reviewed on Flip the Table...it's Mall Madness! In the electronic version of this game, players take the role of shopping-obsessed teenagers racing to buy arbitrarily priced retail goods, such as sunglasses, t-shirts, and pets (on clearance, if possible). Need energy? Stop at the movie theater for a quick meal. Then, send your friend to the rest room to delay their progress. Has this electronic monument to mall culture stood the test of time, or is this just another roll-and-mover with fancy window dressing? Plus; Professor Laserbooks guides us through a Battle of Wits where we plumb the depths of consumer fads. Check it out! Seriously!!!

Direct download: FlipTheTable027.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 9:42pm EDT

Say your prayers and eat your vitamins! It's time to play the WWF Wrestling Superstars board game...with our special guests from Chikara pro wrestling, Billy Kumohara and Ophidian! Join us as the host of Chikara's Quiz Present Crisis Battle and the Venomous and Vile Master of Snake Style wax nostalgic about the golden age of wrestling, and find out what happens when 80's pro wrestlers escape their reality and take up fighting monsters in Tokyo. Then, we check our boots for foreign objects and ring the bell for a special squared-circle themed Battle of Wits! Can Team Chikara steal enough energy from the crowd to defeat the villainous Team Flip the Table, or will they pull hair and bite their way to victory? Download now to find out!

Direct download: FlipTheTable026.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 5:28pm EDT

Leave your razors at home and get ready to scheme...this week's game is Survivor: The Australian Outback! In this game based on one of the earlier seasons of the popular reality show, we collect survival items and engage in intense table politics, sort of, as we attempt to earn immunity and avoid being eliminated at Tribal Council. Secrets will be revealed, and rice will be eaten. Find out who survived the final vote, and whether or not we're still friends after (SPOILER: No.) Plus, it's our most devious, maddening, diabolical Battle of Wits yet!

Direct download: FlipTheTable025.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 6:11pm EDT

It's animated anarchy at Flip the Table Headquarters as we take on two games in our first ever cartoon special! First, we play 1983's Masters of the Universe 3-D Action Game, a spin-and-mover which seeks to improve the Snakes and Ladders formula by injecting a healthy dose of Beast Man. Then we travel from Eternia to Townsville and take on Lenny Baxter and Mojo Jojo in The Powerpuff Girls: Saving the World Before Bedtime...a program movement game all the way from the futuristic utopia of The Year 2000. Is Chemical X enough to overcome The Power of Grayskull? Will He-Man ever figure out how to take the Wind Raider out of reverse? Listen now!

Direct download: FlipTheTable024.mp3
Category:general -- posted at: 12:57am EDT