Fantasy Island, but with yaks

Yakssss queen

Sep 25, 2023

My family and Laura’s family were meeting up when Laura texted she was bringing a game. “It’s not for the weak.”

This sounds like the beginning of a horror movie. (Or of Jumanji.) But it resulted in the best time I’ve had in a long time.

The game, Laura said, was Fantasy Island. I Googled it beforehand: there was a tie-in board-game released in the late 1970s, but I couldn’t find anything newer. It couldn’t be an underwhelming 1970s board game?

She arrived with a boxes whose edges and sides were duct tape: a small bit of cardboard was all that was left over the original board. It was held together with multiple rubber bands. It was in a big plastic bag…along with a yak.

After some Chinese food, Laura took out the game, offset the yak, and opened the box. She folded out the well-worn cardstock game board. Then she took out a hand-drawn piece of paper with a maze on it, and places it next to the board. “This is Bilboland II.”

Then came a checkerboard page: that was “Lucky Dog Land.” And another maze page, “Pancake Land.”

The original game, back in the 1970s had come with a small pile of Good Luck and Bad Luck cads. Laura and her family has long ago discarded these, and in its place were stacks of index cads an inch and a half high. They’ve been written by various people over decades. No one could remmeber what any of them said.

Then came the pieces. Surely there were regular pieces to this game but they, too, had not made he cut. Instead were a Garfield pencil sharpener, a plastic eyeball that rolled all over the place, a Lobster with springs claws, a Lego minifig, a cork. And the yak.

The Lego minifig was called Judge Eato. Not Ito: Eato.

I previous owned a GameCube with four controllers. Before last night’s ersatz version of Fantasy Island, playing a four-person game of Super Smash Bros. where all four people chose Ice Climbers was my Max Craziness level. No one knowing what’s going on, everyone having a great time because of it.

Here’s a taste of what Fantasy Island was like:

--One of my Good Luck cards said that Judge Eato was decapitated, and his severed head became a new character for me to play.

--Five players were on the same space, one of them being the yak.

--The Batman piece was missing so a small cat statue became Batman.

—The eyeball rolled around, so its postion between turns was iffy.

--A Bad Luck card said that Batman and Chicky (a baby chick piece) entered an a—you-can-eat-restaurant, and Batman ate Chicky in between eating the napkin and menu. Chicky couldn’t play for two rounds, until Batman pooped him out.

--Everyone had to stand up and move one space to the right, switching tokens. I was very close to winning; then another card had everyone move two seats to the left.

--I got a card where I’d get a point for every push-up I did. I needed 14 points. I did 14 push-ups. “I didn’t think he’d be able to do it,” someone said.

There is so, so much I’m leaving out. We each had two charatcers for instance, not one,a nd were trying to get money, adventure, and kisses. (This is taken from the original 1970 game, and from the oriignal 1970s. Money, Adventure, Kisses sounds like Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll if you squint with your ears.) The yak’s broken horn was its own character. Judge Eato had a jetpack. BilboLand II suggetsed a Bibloland I, possibly on the other side of the paper.

The original un-Laura-ed version of Fantasy Island takes about 20 minutes to play, per the box (well, per a portion not duct-taped over). This version took hours, and we were no closer to winning than when we started. But winning wasn’t the goal: making warps to three separate game boards wasn’t done to make the game shorter.

Apparently there are easy ways to win: someone can catch fire and kill everyone they run past. Someone else can get a card where they can make up their own rules. There are multiple teleporting cards.

I played games with Laura all throughout college, but I’d never seen or heard of this. She wasn’t sure she wanted to share this level of weirdness with her then-new college friends. But we’re now lifelong friends. And now it’s safe to reveal.

I have never seen the TV show of Fantasy Island. If I ever do, it’s going to be a huge disappointment. Guest stars, a tropical paradise, a tall and short man in matching suits? Where’s the rule saying you must make Michael Jackson noises until doubles are rolled? That you had to pick Bill’s nose? (Luckily for us, Bill was not present, so the rule was waived.) That you got to blow on any other person’s game board, an act that did not affect gameplay but allowed for petty revenge?

Where’s the yak?

If you can, I encourage everyone to play the house-rules version of Fantasy Island.

I be your family has its own odd house-rules game. (Our version of Monopoly involves free parking, one daughter always being the Scotty dog, and saying hi to Cow Manure – Cow Manure being our nickname for the man in jail.) Every family has one game insular and codified with an extra layer fo rules, rules only your fmaily has.

Games bring out the child in all of us, as many of these rules demonstrate. But when was the last time you felt giddy with excitement for what bit of zaniness was going to happen next?

Next tim eyou have people over, treat them to your house-rules baord game. Even if it doens’t have a yak.

PRINCESS LEIA OF THE WEEK

(in honor of the Byzantine rules of Fantays Island, he’re Tina Fey as Liza Lemon as Princess Leia.)