HEROQUEST

I don’t feel nostalgia for many things, but when I fire up HeroQuest and the music suddenly flips into Golden Brown (imagine being a composer, told you only have 30 kilobytes for your entire musical score and thinking, “Cool, that means I can fit this harpsichord solo by The Stranglers in”), I feel a full-blown Proustian rush.

The ad for the board game version of HeroQuest has the same effect. Like a whole generation of baby dorks I saw those kids saying “I’ll use my broadsword” and “Fire of Wrath!” and immediately asked my parents to buy it for me when Christmas rolled around. Then I played it with my parents, my friends, and my babysitter until everyone was thoroughly bored. Even my babysitter didn’t want to play it any more, and she was paid to spend time with me. I kept playing by myself, keeping the board set up on a tiny table for one under the stairs, controlling all the monsters as well as a full suite of four heroes.