I’m old enough to have owned the first Nintendo Gameboy when I was a kid. At the time, that was about as technologically advanced as video games could get. The thought of a video game you could put in your pocket seemed only about five years shy of flying cars and living on the moon. Then around the turn of the century we all Kelly Slater Pro Surf-ed our faces off with Playstation. Now we’re talking! You could get barreled when you’re not in the ocean getting barreled. And now, of course, it seems every four year old walking through every mall has a tablet sized smart phone of their own packed with about $600 worth of apps they bought in the iTunes store, making my generation’s “video games” look about as outdated as Zack Morris’s brick cell phone.
And if you’re part of the generation that can fondly remember feeling like Gameboys were the thing of the future, then you can also remember those prehistoric things called boardgames. Boardgames were the ancient family tool for bonding that required each person to dedicate a minimum of 7 hours of their evening to a competition that most likely required zero skill whatsoever (depending on the game). The catch with board games wasn’t so much to win the game itself, rather it was to outlast everybody else at the table in fighting off the urge to just flip out, toss the entire game set across the living room in a fit of rage, and declare that you quit. See, board games were never about winning as much as they were about not losing. And if you weren’t the grumpy asshole who lost your cool, then you didn’t lose. Game night success.
It turns out somebody took those same cultural traditions and found a way to make surfing into a board game. You know, like how our prehistoric ancestors used to get barreled when they weren’t out getting barreled? And yes, in this game you actually do try to get barreled. In fact, getting barreled is part of how you win: surfing better than everybody else. Which is pretty much on par with life anyway. The Tavarua board game has a channel where you’ll paddle out into the lineup and eventually pick a wave to ride. From the description, it sounds as if you actually practice a little bit of wave selection, trying to get back to the beach on the best wave without wiping out. And sometimes, just like in real life, getting the best one means deciding to steal a wave from the guy next to you before selfishly going about the rest of your day, guilt free. Because just like in real life, if you can’t prove to all your friends that you’re the best surfer, you lose.
