2018-12-19

Rederiet Gamer's Guide

Rederiet is Sweden's longest running soap opera on TV. I lasted 20 seasons from 1992 to 2002. A total of 318 episodes was produced. Every episode was 45 minutes long making it 14 310 minutes or almost 239 hours of pure fun. All episodes are available at SVT Play. The series actually contains some funny moments for gamers. We will here let you know all of them as we watch it all over again.

1992

Season 1, episode 5 (10:30): One of Gustafs monitors are acting weird. This monitor/TV is almost the same as the SABA M 25 that Victor from Revansch! uses.

Season 1, episode ? (??:??): Pirojo's son Esa is playing Game Boy in one of the episodes, forgot which though.

1993

Season 3, episode 1 (4:30): One of the founders and the former general of Retrospelsmässan appears briefly with his grandmother when Uno is falling in the stairs. His name is Kristofer Aspman-Hansson, nowadays a Swedish game collector. Very young in this episode.

Season 3, episode 8 (39:30): A girl is playing the pinball Whirlwind (Williams, 1990) in the ship's arcade hall. And yes, she places here soda on top of the glass. You can also see Electrocoin's Neo Geo cabinet, two SEGA Mega Tech and SEGA's Virtua Racing. There is at least one more pinball in the room, unknown title though. And a exchange machine.

Season 3, episode 12 (30:00): Raspen is playing the pinball Creature from the Black Lagoon (Bally, 1992) when thinking of Kåkå, he is approached by two beautiful women that wants him to join them to the disco. He refuses. You can also see Rollergames (Williams, 1990), two(!) Star Wars (Data East, 1992) and the brand new games White Water (Williams, 1993) and Rocky & Bullwinkle (Data East, 1993). A girl is sitting on one of the Star Wars machine talking to her boyfriend. In the background a racing game is slightly shown, but which game is it?

(34:00) Later in the same episode Raspen plays Super Nintendo among the famous Bergsala plastic mountains, on a Philips CRT TV. A Finnish boy helps him. You can see the Game Boy logo on several places. Kåkå i pregnant, maybe a child would be fun after all he seems to think.

Season 3, episode 15 (32:00): Raspen has multiball on the pinball The Addams Family (Bally, 1992) when Kåkå interrups.

1994

Season 5, episode 4 (36:00): A drunken unpleasant man destroys one of the ship's one-armed bandits. You can clearly see that the owner of the slot machine is Sven-Aage Bengtsson's company Arcadia, who also had arcade games at for example Gröna Lund.

Season 5, episode 9 (29:00): Pehr Silver har turned the restaurant into a western themed one. Without any real reason Siv Svensson is playing Game Boy (probably Tetris, if it is turned on?) in the bar, when her boyfriend Carl is mocking her. You can also see the slot machines again in this episode.

1996

Season 8, episode 9 (33:00): After some seasons without any real gaming references (just lots of gambling) we again meet the Game Boy in the bar. Little girl Blanca loans Jokers gaming device. Tony helps her start the Golf game seen in the scene. The sound is probably from another game though.

1997

Season 11, episode 7 (1:58): Tony is in the hospital with the kid Jonas. He gives the analog Real Hockey game to him as a present. This game by SweGame AB challenged the classic Stiga table hockey in the 90s, but was soon forgotten again.

Season 11, episode 9 (2:25):
 Tony is again in the hospital with Jonas. Jonas has a very nice bed set with classic 90s racing Super Mario! Worth a peak. Can also be seen in episode 11 and 12.

Season 11, episode 12 (31:58): Finally some real video games again! Jonas gets a Game Boy Pocket in silver from his dad. The game cartridge is yellow and probably Donkey Kong Land (Rare, 1995), but the screen is really hard to see. It might be number 2 in the series also, it was released at this time. However number 3 was not.

To be continued...












2018-11-28

Swedish comics timeline

Here it is, the timeline over the longest running comics in Sweden. I think I got the hold of everyone over 30 years in business. Of course Kalle Anka (Donald Duck) is in the frontseat with it's 70 years. Sad thing that Egmont canned Seriemagasinet in the year of 2000, it was then tied with Donald and could have been used to test lots of comics since the name isn't tied to any specific comic.

You can see Egmont's efforts in two ways. One is that they is the big bad company with almost monopoly over Swedish comics. At least if you talk about recurrent comic magazines, lots of others release albums for example. On the other hand what would have been left if not Egmont did it? Nothing at all?

Fantomen (The Phantom) is very popular in Sweden and the second longest running comic magazine. 91:an i currently having the third place and Knasen (Bettle Bailey) will become fourth in just five years. Both funny comics about the life at an army base. It is also interesting to see what companies have publiced the different magazines through the years. Look for the colors.

The very first Swedish comic book was Musse Pigg-Tidningen (The Mickey Mouse paper) in 1937. Beating Donald Duck with over 10 years! The big suprise on this chart is probably Tom & Jerry, still so popular they can have their own magazine!

If you see something wrong here, just mail us!

Please click on the picture to enhance it!


2018-10-31

Best board games?

This is the best board games each year according to some different awards. The names are mostly in English, but in the original language if such a name is missing.

American "Origins Award" is also an important price but has a very confusing time line and lots of different awards that inflict with each other. The Swedish price "Årets spel" is not a very important price but one of the oldest beginning in 1984.

Interestingly enough "Årets spel" 2018 is Diamant, a game from 2005! All others in this list chose Azul. But this seems to be the way of board games, they are not released everywhere at the same time. Good games might last longer than people think. Another example is the "Spiel des Jahres" winner in 1991: Um Reifenbreite that is actually a Dutch game from 1979!

It also seems that the Swedish jury during the 00s had almost the same taste for board games as "Spiel des Jahres", but later that changed again. Weirdly, Ubongo has won "Årets spel" twice, first 2003 under the name Pyramidens portar, then again in 2009! Somebody did not know their own history very well.

If you see something wrong in this list, please mail us. As you also see there are some questions marks. The "Origins Awards" are so full of questions it is impossible to list it...


Spiel des Jahres Årets spel As d'Or Deutscher Spiele Preis

Germany Sweden France Germany

2019

Just One

Planet

The Mind

Wingspan
2018 Azul Diamant Azul Azul
2017 Kingdomino Patchwork Unlock! Terraforming Mars
2016 Codenames Otrio Mysterium Mombasa
2015 Colt Express Klask Colt Express The Voyages of Marco Polo
2014 Camel Up La Boca Concept Russian Railroads
2013 Hanabi Quizmysteriet Legends of Andor Terra Mystica
2012 Kingdom Builder Lift it! Takenoko Village
2011 Qwirkle LEGO Champion Skull 7 Wonders
2010 Dixit Ponder Duplik Fresco
2009 Dominion Ubongo Dixit Dominion
2008 Keltis Niagara Marrakech Agricola
2007 Zooloretto Portobello Market Wicked Witches Way The Pillars of the Earth
2006 Thurn and Taxis Bernini Time's Up! Caylus
2005 Niagara Ticket to Ride ? Louis XIV
2004 Ticket to Ride Blokus Ticket to Ride Saint Petersburg
2003 Alhambra Ubongo (Pyramidens P.) Alhambra Amun-Re
2002 Villa Paletti Carcassonne Bakari Puerto Rico
2001 Carcassonne Diceman Blokus Carcassonne
2000 Torres N.Y. Chase Kahuna Taj Mahal
1999 Tikal Herre på täppan Spice Navigator Tikal
1998 Elfenland Lotus Zatre Tigris & Euphrates
1997 Mississippi Queen Svea rike Gang of Four Löwenherz
1996 El Grande Snapshot Magic - The Gathering El Grande
1995 The Settlers of Catan Manhattan Condottiere The Settlers of Catan
1994 Manhattan Foqus Pusher Take 6!
1993 Call my Bluff Spectrangle Pipeline Modern Art
1992 Um Reifenbreite Ostindiska kompaniet Quarto Flying Dutchman
1991 Drunter und Drüber Maestro ? Master Labyrinth
1990 Adel Verpflichtet Balderdash Tutankhamen's Rev. Hoity Toity
1989 Café International Ave Caesar Abalone
1988 Barbarossa The aMAZEing Labyrinth SuperGang
1987 Auf Achse Orient Express

1986 Top Secret Spies Phantoms vs Phantoms

1985 Sherlock Holmes Trivial Pursuit

1984 Railway Rivals Mandala

1983 Scotland Yard


1982 Enchanted Forest


1981 Focus


1980 Rummikub


1979 Hare and Tortoise


2018-10-30

Board game makers

Interested of making your own game? These producers can help you. So far we have only tried Offason. More makers will be added in the future.

Board Games Maker, Hong Kong/China (no minimum order!)
www.boardgamesmaker.com

Cartamundi, Belgium
www.cartamundi.se

Fabryka Kart, Poland
www.fabryka-kart.eu

Grand Prix International, USA
www.grandprixintl.com

Long Pack Games, China
www.longpackgames.com

Ludo Fact, Germany
www.ludofact.de

NIngbo Lijia Industry, China
www.cnlijia.cn

Offason, Sweden
www.offason.se

Panda Game Manufacturing, China
www.pandagm.com

QPC Games, USA
www.qpcgames.com

Shuffled Ink, USA
www.shuffledink.com

Starry Games, Hong Kong/China
www.starrygames.com

The Ace Card Company, India
www.allplayingcards.com

But does choosing China-based producers make you a supporter of communism and oppression?

2018-10-29

Welcome to MGIG






Welcome to a new site for MGIG (Mygrandmotherisgone). This will be much easier to update, using Blogger and not html.
This page will be mostly in English so that lots of people can use it. However, texts about books in Swedish will be in the original language.



Välkommen till en ny hemsida för MGIG. Denna kommer vara mycket enklare att uppdatera med hjälp av Blogger och inte vanlig gammal html.

Hemsidan kommer vara mest på engelska för att nå så många personer som möjligt. Texter om böcker på svenska kommer dock fortsatt vara på det svenska språket.