Long lost treasures

A recent venture in the loft uncovered a  few long-lost treasures which haven't seen the light of day for many years (certainly not since we moved to this house back in the mid-90s)

The loft is a terrifying place full of chaotically arranged boxes of figures and games as well as years if accrued junk that, for some reason, we decided to put away... just in case...

So here are the excavated treasures...

Ogre... doesnt really need an introduction.  Giant robot/tank faces off against a range of more conventional troops and usually crushes them all mercilessly.  Like a lot of my early games, these games all came from the long-gone Games Gallery shop on Glasgow's Great Western Road.  This was played to death back in the 80s

Black Hole... another game from the Metagaming range. A great concept, these pocket sized games were a bit variable in quality but the range contained some real gems.  This game is set on a doughnut shaped asteroid with a black hole at its centre (probably best not to think about the science too much!).  Missiles launched off one side of the map reappear on the other edge circling the play area which always caused chaos.

Car Wars... another one that doesn't need an introduction.  It's gone through lots of evolutions since this first version.  I loved the ability to design your own cars and probably spent far too many hours doing that back in 1981.  Having played and enjoyed Gaslands more recently it'd be interesting to see how this hold up today.

Valkenburg Castle.  This one's a bit more obscure.  It was published by Task Force Games in 1980 and is very much in the Metagaming style.  It comes across initially as a dungeoncrawl but at its heart it's really a tactical wargame, exploring and fighting through differently levels of the titular castle. There are various scenarios and a campaign game.  I have a memory of mainly playing this solo.

It's interesting to look at the maps and counters in these games in  light of the quality components we now expect as standard... some of them are really quite rough and ready (definitely Valkenburg Castle!), and yet I had hours and hours of fun from these.  And all at a bargain price!