Test the movie knowledge of you and your friends with the nostalgic Blockbuster Board Game — a 90s themed game designed for anyone who has ever seen a movie, by Big Potato Games.
Blockbuster stores may be long gone, but the nostalgia of looking through rows and rows of VHS tapes to rent has stayed with many of us. Somehow, it’s just more satisfying than endlessly scrolling through Netflix looking for something to watch. So I was very excited to hear about the Blockbuster Board Game — a 90s themed game designed for anyone who has ever seen a movie.
The packaging is instantly recognisable as Blockbuster. The mainboard is designed as a parking lot, with a Blockbusters sign above it. The battery-powered buzzer is also blue and yellow to match. All of the movie cards are designed to look like VHS cassette tapes, and the game even arrived in a box with ‘Quickdrop’ on the front!
How to play
The game itself is easy to pick up and play. It’s designed for four to 10 players split into two teams. The first part is a head-to-head round called Movie Buzzer Battle. Each team chooses a player to go head-to-head with a player from the opposing team. The teams are given a topic, such as ‘films beginning with W’, and then the timer starts. Each player has 15 seconds to shout out a film title and then hit the buzzer, which resets the timer. This continues until one player runs out of time on the buzzer, and the winning team then get to go first on the next round.
The second part is called Triple Charades Jeopardy. The winner of Round One gets to pick from six movie cards, keeping the three easiest and passing the rest to the other team. They then have to choose which of their three cards to Act It, Quote It or use One Word to describe it, placing them in the corresponding place on the parking lot board. They then have 30 seconds to play through their three cards, while their team has to try and guess each one correctly.
The correctly guessed cards then go into the team’s stash. Each film is from one of eight genres, and the winning team is the one that collects a movie card from each genre.
A great party game
I played this with a group of three friends, and we had a fantastic evening.
The head-to-head rounds were quite challenging at times. Being put on the spot makes it really difficult to think quickly, even when you’d think the answer is obvious — for example, ‘name a film beginning with the letter ‘W’. Sounds easy, right? Well, I didn’t think so, as I managed to come up with exactly 0 in my head-to-head. Another we had was ‘films by Steven Speilberg’. We came up with E.T. then Jurassic Park — and completely drew a blank. Sure, he might be “one of the founding pioneers of the new Hollywood era” according to Wikipedia, but neither of us could think of any other films he has done. Ooops.
We loved the variety in the different activities in the second round. At first, we felt a little self-conscious about acting out various films, but after the first turn we all warmed up to it. It also became quite tactical — for example, the winner of the head-to-head round would need to choose cards that their teammate would get, not just films they knew. For example, I am a big fan of Disney films while my teammate had never watched a Disney film — so unfortunately, my wonderful impression of Sleeping Beauty went down like a lead balloon (he thought it was Dracula!).
I also enjoyed the ‘One Word’ far more than I thought I would. At first, this seemed impossible (how can you sum up a film with just one word?) but it ended up being my favourite. We had to try and be creative with the one word — for example, for the Shining: “here’s….!” (in The Voice), or “Sid” with a lisp, for the sloth in Ice Age.
I was a little worried before playing this that because I am not a ‘movie buff’, I would really struggle to think of any films or answer any of the questions. The head-to-head round is open-ended with many potentially correct answers, so this was never an issue for us (I don’t think I can blame my lack of movie knowledge for my failure to think of a film beginning with ‘W’!).
As the second round covers so many genres, you will inevitably come across some films that you are unsure of or haven’t heard of. There were a few times when a team had a card in the second round that they didn’t recognise, and just had to try their best. However, the rules state that they can also be quotes or scenes that you might expect a film of that title to have so it doesn’t necessarily need to be a direct quote, which makes it much easier! We only had one card in the two games we played that none of us recognised (Kes).
We also really liked the Blockbuster-themed packaging and that each of the cards is a VHS cassette. It struck just the right nostalgic chord with my group of friends.
The only thing that could have made this game better would have been two buttons for the timer, rather than just one. For the second round, players need to press the button down for five seconds to get the longer, 30-second timer needed. There were a few occasions when we would press it for just four without realising, and it would set to the 15 seconds timer for round one. We would only realise the mistake when it buzzed us out, ending the round, far too early!
Overall, Blockbuster is a fantastic game, and truly is a ‘game for anyone who has ever watched a movie’. As both rounds are timed, they run very quickly, so there is little time to get bored. There is a huge variety of films so there is something for everyone, and it makes it great fun to replay as every game is different. We laughed so much and so hard that I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Blockbuster to anyone looking for a fun game to play with friends or family.
You can purchase Blockbuster Board Game on Amazon.
Love board games? Check out our list of the top board games we’ve reviewed.
We enjoyed this too, but we house ruled it a bit, giving 60 seconds for the main round and used a phone timer.