Publisher: Big Potato Games
Age: 12+
Players: 4-8
Game Length: 20 mins
MSRP: $19.99
The category was “movies with superheroes.” My wife and I locked eyes from across the table, hands poised over the buzzer. What followed was a hilariously heated exchange as we realized the incredible amount of superhero films we’ve seen together.
The Blockbuster Party Game combines multiple social party game modes within a delightfully nostalgic package, hearkening back to those 90s days of Friday night runs to the VHS tape emporium, Blockbuster Video.
Be Kind, Please Rewind
In the Blockbuster Party Game, players divide into two teams. Gameplay is divided into two halves, with the first half featuring a head-to-head match between two players on opposing teams. A card is drawn from a deck of 60 category cards, such as “movies set during Christmas,” or “movies by Steven Spielberg.” Both players call out answers while hitting the buzzer to impose a 15-second timer on their opponent, until one of them is stumped.
In the second half of the game, the winner of the head-to-head match draws six cards from a different deck of 200 movie cards, selects three, and gives the other three to the losing player. Both players choose which of their three cards to put in each of the three spots on the board for their team to guess. Depending on the spot that was chosen, the players then take turns using a single word, a single quote, or attempting to act out a scene in the hopes their team guesses each film.
The 200-card movie deck contains a rich assortment of popular films, spread among eight different genres, from Horror and Animation to All-Time Classics. Even if you’re not a cinephile, there’s a solid chance you’ve at least heard of movies like Groundhog Day, Rambo, and Forest Gump. The game ends when one team acquires at least one of each genre movie card by correctly guessing the movie.
For a light party game, there remains a decent level of strategy as players decide which movies and which categories they want to assign them. For Home Alone I could shout “KEVIN!” as my one word clue, or use the classic quote, “Keep the change, ya filthy animal.” The Act It category often becomes the throw-away section, however, as we found it challenging to pantomime any scene of a film within a 30-second window for all three categories. We quickly realized how many action films are just Dude Shooting Gun.
The Rating
The Blockbuster Party Game has a 12+ age rating. The gameplay isn’t tactically complex nor does it contain any objectionable material (unless you count R-rated movie titles). The age rating is due to the decades of movie knowledge that’s recommended, at least on a surface level, to fully enjoy the game.
The Takeaway
The party game goes all-in with the Blockbuster theme, featuring a foldable parking lot board with attachable Blockbuster sign, and VHS tapes as movie cards. The entire package is contained within a rectangular plastic shell, exactly like a VHS box that I’d rent stacks of throughout the 90s. The Blockbuster Party Game effectively balances head-to-head movie trivia with the social enjoyment of remembering, quoting, acting, and referencing popular movies, the perfect party game for nostalgic 80s and 90s kids of a bygone era.
Find The Blockbuster Party Game at Target.
