Читать книгу TV Cream Toys Lite - Steve Berry - Страница 16

See also Up Periscope, Computer Battleship, Chutes Away

Way before The X Files, back in the mysterious 1980s, part-work magazines such as The Unexplained and telly shows like The Crazy World of Arthur C. Clarke¹–he invented satellites, you know–cashed in on our periodic fascination for paranormal phenomena. Strange how, in cycles of almost exactly 20 years, ESP, spontaneous combustion, spoon-bending and all that bollocks inexplicably suckers in an entirely new generation. One might say that the regularity itself is almost…supernatural. Woooo!

Further back in the mists of time, in 1974 to be exact, Charles Berlitz wrote a book called The Bermuda Triangle. Then, in 1981–by complete coincidence–Barry Manilow had a Top 20 hit of the same name. Spooky, huh? In the intervening years, MB had cashed in handsomely with this ships ‘n’ storm cloud ludo variant.

Yet even at a young age, when our experience of triangles was limited to early maths lessons, school band practice and Quality Street,² we spotted the one thing lacking from this game. The board was square. The cloud was–erm–acoustic-guitar-shaped (and we’d love to have been sitting in on the design meeting for that one). Even the ‘shipping route’ around the game was just some random meandering.

That aside (and ignoring the very fundamental imprudence in setting up a merchant-shipping operation in the middle of an area renowned for strange disappearances), it was a fun game. Move your fleet around the board, trading for bananas, oil, timber and sugar, and try to avoid the ominous, foreboding, magnetic cloud that wants to eat your ships. Simple.

Various ‘spoiler’ tactics could be employed (blocking your fellow players’ ships from each dock), but none was more effective than bribing whoever was moving the cloud to spin it just that bit too fast, thus preventing the ominous ‘click’ of magnet on magnet and keeping you in the game for another go. Many Top Trumps and sticker collections would unaccountably vanish under the table when the Bermuda Triangle rolled into town.

Incidentally, theories that the strange occurrences of the real Bermuda Triangle are caused by aliens sucking boats and planes out of the sky with giant magnets have not yet been disproved. But then, as the great Arthur C. Clarke himself said, ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’³

1 You must remember it, surely? No? Oh, alright, it was actually called Arthur C. Clarke’s Mysterious World, but we’d love to have seen the auld fella fetch up on Top of the Pops singing ‘Fire’. That would’ve been fab!

2 The green ones. You can also buy posh chocs in triangle-shaped boxes Toblerone doesn’t count–technically, it’s a prism.

3 He’s the president of the H.G. Wells fan club, you know.