After a long flight with a little hangover and a medical emergency on board that caused the paramedics to meet my plane at the gate, I’m back from 107th American International Toy Fair and it was a great time!  Toy Fair has really changed over the past 10 years with the Toy Building closing and the development of Dallas Fall Toy Preview but it’s still an important event on any game inventor’s calendar!
In its current state Toy Fair is a mix of large companies with small (if any) booths, medium …

Ever have one of those Christmases where someone gives you something you don’t want – like a terrible cold?  That was my Christmas this year.  I spend a chunk of time on my couch trying to get into the holiday spirit but really I just kept the tissue companies in business.  One good thing came out of all of this – I got to play a lot of ThinkFun’s Rush Hour.  Now I know in the past I’ve said that one-player products aren’t games and this is a game review …

I’ve decided that my holiday gift to you – the readers of The Game Aisle – should not be another “Top Games” list but instead a list of games to help you make it through the holidays! I’ve got a game to make almost every holiday situation more fun – or at least a lot less painful!
Enjoy and Happy Holidays!

I can’t believe I’m writing an article about holiday themed games, but I am.  Here’s why: I was shopping yesterday and I saw all sorts of people buying ugly holiday pins and overly sparkly Christmas sweaters.  So if people insist on buying Christmas-themed products, I want to show them what the game industry has to offer!  And unlike holiday sweaters these could be used year round without tons of strange looks.  So here I’ve picked some of my favorites:

Holiday Yahtzee, A Christmas Story Yahtzee, Charlie Brown Christmas Yahtzee
Personally I think …

The National Toy Hall of Fame announced this morning it’s 2009 inductees! They are:
The Ball, Big Wheel and the Nintendo Game Boy!

The announcement took place at the Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY and the items were chosen from twelve nominees which also included: Cabbage Patch Kids, Game of Life, Hot Wheels, Paper Airplane, Playing Cards, Rubik’s Cube, Sidewalk Chalk, Toy Tea Set, and Transformers. The Toy Hall of Fame accepts toy and game nominations all year and on November 5th they announced this year’s nominees biased on …

I’m back!  Yes, the lack of articles over the last 2 weeks is because I was on vacation.  And I offer up this photo from my trip to kick off my rant about games and travel.
In this photo you can see my husband playing Ms. Pac-Man at the airport in San Juan.  They have old arcade games peppered throughout the terminals and given that we had five hours to sit around, my husband and I really appreciated them.
Here in the US if you end up in an American Airlines Admiral’s …

So today I’m going to talk about other places to look for games: garage sales and eBay.  There are plenty of games that ran their course and aren’t in production anymore.  This doesn’t mean that they’re bad, they might not be marketable right now.  Are these games still fun?  YES!  You might find something spectacular, something that none of your friends have ever seen or heard of but absolutely love the first time they play.  Or maybe you find a game that brings back fuzzy memories from your younger years …

Periodically I get an email, a comment, a Facebook or LinkedIn message asking me if I can help a someone get a meeting with Hasbro’s inventor relations department.  Typically I say, “Sorry no, I would be seriously damaging my relationship with Hasbro if I did that” (which is the truth) and politely point them in the direction of the TIA’s website which talks about agents and other options.
What most beginning game inventors don’t realized is that there is a large group of professional inventors out there, commonly referred to as …

Recently an inventor/self manufacturer contacted me asking if I would review her game.  She sent me an email with a brief description of the item and after much agonizing contemplation I agreed to take a look at the product.  Why the hesitation?  I don’t think her product can be called a “game.” (And as you all know, here at The Game Aisle I review games.)
A sample of Inspiralus arrived and I played with it for a little while but I still was not convinced it could be called a game.  …

It’s been almost 30 years since an MTV VJ aired “Video Killed the Radio Star” and it sparked the idea that radio would fall and music videos would rise to be the medium of choice for music listeners here in the US.  But surprise, surprise, radio didn’t disappear and instead has evolved to include satellite radio, HD radio and live streaming over the web.  We can even download podcasts of radio shows onto our ipods.  How did we ever think that radio could be replaced?  It’s been a classic pastime …