16 replies to this topic

[Flat Black]

Many moons ago I owned a board game based on the 1971 Indy 500.

The board had a drawing of the Speedway that was broken up into many sections, much like a checker board.

The pieces for the game were small cardboard rectangles with a number on them corresponding to each car/driver that was entered in the race. Thus, there were 33 pieces.

And if I remember correctly, each car/driver had a corresponding "speed card" that was used to tabulate how many spaces each car would advance according to the number that appeared on a rolled die. On average, the faster cars/drivers (Unser, Revson, Foyt) would advance around the track more quickly than the slower cars/drivers (Zimmerman, Warren, Folmer).

The object, if you had the patience, was to run the entire race with all 33 drivers! I actually did it once or twice.

Anyway, I lost this game a long time ago and it seems to be a rather scarce item. Anybody on TNF remember this game, own it, or know where I might be able to lay my paws on it?

Thanks in advance.

[GeorgeTheCar]

Google gave: http://www.boardgame....com/game/12966

[Rob G]

When I was a boy, my next-door neighbor gave me bits and pieces of what sounds similar to the game you had. IIRC it was based on the '76 or '77 500. The only things I received were the driver cards (a complete set of 33 IIRC, each with a nice color portrait but sadly no picture of the cars), and 32 ( ) of the game pieces, which were each made of yellow plastic molded into a vague representation of an Indy car complete with its own number (1-33). I have no idea what the game board looked like, or whether there were any other pieces. I think I may have been given the instructions too, but whatever I have is in a box in my closet.

[Rob G]

I found the one like I have. I was off by a couple of years, but this is it. I think I've got the red and blue sheet as well as some scoresheets, but I don't have the game board, the box or the blue pieces.

http://cgi.ebay.com/...bayphotohosting

[Flat Black]

Rob,

Yep, that's the game. Only difference is mine was from '71 and there were no portraits nor plastic pieces. Mine was more primitive, but the rules and concept were apparently the same. And like I said, hard to find.

[Buford]

Oh wow I had that - I had totally forgotten. I got poster board and made other courses like Mosport and Sebring and Watkins Glen and Riverside I remember.

[McGuire]

Originally posted by Buford
Oh wow I had that - I had totally forgotten. I got poster board and made other courses like Mosport and Sebring and Watkins Glen and Riverside I remember.

That is pretty cool when I think about it... all the hours of enjoyment you must have had using mainly your imagination. I wonder what kids of the video-game generation would be able to do with the game. I suspect it would hold their interest for about .05 seconds, if that.

[Buford]

Embarrassing thing was I was over 21 I think and racing myself in real cars, if you consider Mini Coopers to be real cars. But I wanted to try it out on different tracks.

[Flat Black]

Frankly, I can't imagine that this game would have held the attention of normal kids, even in the pre-video game era. Then again, I was not a normal kid.

[Paolo]

I have been for years an avid player of Speed Circuit, by Avalon Hill. We made a lot of custom tracks, including Indy. The greatest thing about it was that it was not dice based: cars were moved computing acceleration, corner speed, trajectory etc.; yet it was a very simple game. It started my love for motor racing.

[Jim Thurman]

Statis-Pro USAC Auto Racing. I enjoyed sports board games and it was great to see this announced. I bought it as soon as possible. Little blue plastic cars (both rear and front engined ). Simple, printed cards for each driver in several years of the '500' (off the top of my head I recall '52 and '66, but there were several years).

The guy behind Statis-Pro was interesting. He was an Iowan who also made a hockey game for the teams in the regional semi-pro league (the US Hockey League). Eventually he produced several sports games before selling out to Avalon Hill. He was also known for his sports handicapping abilities and moved to Vegas to become a pro oddsmaker.

I never got the Avalon Hill version, but my brother did. It had far better graphics, in no small thanks to the bigger company. We got every racing board game one could find and I still remember using every large box in the neighborhood my brother could get ahold of to mark off superspeedways.

The neighbors probably thought it was a bit odd that as soon as the truck drove away after delivering a new big appliance, my brother and I would be at the door asking for the box saying "Now we can make Charlotte"

[Buford]

Ha ha so I wasn't the only one who made additional tracks. I remember coming into the corners, the squares that were off-line had a two or a three space penalty to keep the cars from going there unless they wanted to make a dangerous outside pass. The line had no penalty points and off-line excursions did which gave it some realism as it wasn't easy to pass on the corners unless the guy had a good "run".

[Jim Thurman]

Originally posted by Buford
Ha ha so I wasn't the only one who made additional tracks. I remember coming into the corners, the squares that were off-line had a two or a three space penalty to keep the cars from going there unless they wanted to make a dangerous outside pass. The line had no penalty points and off-line excursions did which gave it some realism as it wasn't easy to pass on the corners unless the guy had a good "run".

Probably not. Though the large boxes my brother made courses on was about 10 years before the Statis Pro game. He came up with a simple dice roll game, but added some things to it. For example, in NASCAR superspeedway events, you could draft and then pop out with an extra one die roll.

The extra squares for each line, yes, that was a feature of the Statis-Pro game.

[Flat Black]

The video game generation will never know such delights. Hell, maybe they gain pleasure I'll never know. I dunno.

[don hodgdon]

Bumping an old thread to show off the LeMans board game that my brother gave me for my 55th b'day. We played this game endlessly as kids in the 60s, as we did again at a recent family reunion.

Also shown is one of the many copies of Speed Circuit we went through over the years. We had our best races though (and some monumental fights!) with the Indy 500 game. We would update the drivers and cars every year and stage marathon games that lasted for days.

[Bloggsworth]

I remember in the early '60s a schoolmate, at a boarding school in Suffolk, had an "Indy" type circuit table-top game which consisted of 2 green vacuum formings each making up half of the "Oval", these were overlapped to make the complete circuit. The cars were placed on the "Track" and a steel ball rolled down a tube pointed at the back of the car; by this means the racers were propelled round the circuit - It was seriously boring and I could only conceive of 500 laps of that game being regarded as cruel and unusual punishment!

[D-Type]

Originally posted by Bloggsworth
I remember in the early '60s a schoolmate, at a boarding school in Suffolk, had an "Indy" type circuit table-top game which consisted of 2 green vacuum formings each making up half of the "Oval", these were overlapped to make the complete circuit. The cars were placed on the "Track" and a steel ball rolled down a tube pointed at the back of the car ; by this means the racers were propelled round the circuit - It was seriously boring and I could only conceive of 500 laps of that game being regarded as cruel and unusual punishment!

Sounds rather like The Subbeteo Motor Racing game