Retro Gaming : Lawn Darts

During this summer I went and visited my Grandfather (who incidently turned 95). While he is doing great for his age he has gotten in the mindset that he needs to rid himself of all the years of junk and clutter he has gathered and told us to take what we want out of his garage. Unfortunately I had a full car already, packing an infant 8 hours in a car will do that to you, so I had to bypass a few things for the real target I had been eyeing up since I was 5 or 6 and had enjoyed many summers with... the Lawn Darts.

Now these aren't your modern day, bottle nosed, weighted down "Lawn Darts" that they let kids play with today, these are the classic "take an eye out with a sharp pointed tip" Lawn Darts!



For those of you who never experianced Lawn Darts with the classic javeline's its pretty simple. You throw a targeting ring some distance away from you and give the javeline dart the olde underarm toss up into the air and towards the target. A relatively simple task that results in a lot of fun (especially if you are avoiding errant darts).

Playing Lawn Darts one is pretty amazed by the simplicity of it all, its a game of self challenge trying to best your last try and its a game of competition against the other guy, so social and solo. But it also goes to show you really do not need to clutter a game full of non-sense and fluff to make it fun (has anyone seen Sorry Sliders? It's some lame combination of throwing weighted Sorry pegs at one another on a small game board like it was a game of curling... very lame and unoriginal), just get down to the core basics of what makes it enjoyable, social gaming with friends (competition and sharing some laughs) as well as individual competition to do better than last time.

Needless to say I am pretty pleased to have saved this little bit of banned history and look forward to next summer where I can get a quick game of Lawn Darts in on the fresh new sod in the back yard.