News on Relevant Science: The 10 Worst Board Games Ever Created

Nothing is more family friendly than a night of playing board games together. Everyone's laughing and bonding over the friendly competition. There are millions of games that you could play, ranging from educational to humorous to challenging, but if you choose one of these 10 board games to play with friends or family, it's more likely you'll be bored, offended, or avoiding eye contact with each other. Make a mental note of these rotten games to save your sanity and your relationships.

Beverly Hills 90210 Entangle

The game of Twister was said to be selling "sex in a box" when it first came out, but those critics had no idea what was in store for society in 1991. Beverly Hills 90210 Entangle combines the popularity of Twister with the TV show that had teens glued to their televisions. Rather than players placing their hands and feet on colored dots, they are ordered to make contact with the body parts (none of them dirty in the official rules) of various 90210 characters. You might be directed to land your foot on Donna Martin's knee (take that, Tori Spelling) or your elbow on Dylan McKay's shoulder. And once you are done playing the game, you basically have a life-size plastic poster of the cast. This isn't just a weird concept to everyone who dislikes 90210 but it was probably disturbing to parents who were begged to purchase the game.
Mouse Trap

The Rube Goldberg machine of Mouse Trap made it incredibly appealing to children and adults alike. Most of us aren't creative or patient enough to figure out how to build this kind of device on our own, so if you convinced your parents to buy this game, both you and your mom or dad were probably eager to take it home and get it out of the box. But that's where the problem starts. In theory, you're supposed to build the trap as you go around the board and then wait for the fates to align so you can release the trap on your opponent, but what most people want to do is just build the thing and set it off. The pieces are complicated and the instructions would be nearly impossible to figure out for the six-year-olds who are playing. By the time the trap is set up, no one even wants to play; you just let the trap go off once and then begin the arduous task of disassembling it.
War on Terror: The Board Game

Nothing says family fun like pretending to be terrorists. This board game is comparable to Risk in that there are empires and players try to conquer each other. But the terrible magic really happens with this game when some people start discovering oil or obtaining terrorist cards that they can choose to use or not use at any time. The game can end in world peace (unlikely), the triumph of an empire, or the terrorists can destroy all forms of government. For people who like to play board games in order to escape reality, War on Terror: The Board Game will probably just leave you crumpled on the floor weeping openly for the state of our world. But if you like to play out what you read in the newspaper every day, this game could be a blast.
Darkies in the Melon Patch

This unbelievably offensive game was marketed as being a classic game from the 1930s. The goal is to escape from a melon patch as quickly as possible so as not to be caught by the farmer and is played like a basic roll-and-move board game. It has been discovered, however, that the game was probably only created within the last few years and made to look old to make a heftier profit. There is apparently a big market for black Americana that came from anywhere between the 1880s and World War II, and forgeries are common within every collectible genre. It's unknown whether this game ever existed in the early 20th century, but selling a new version of the racist race is just appalling.
Power Lunch

If you've ever tried to create a seating chart for a wedding reception or other important meal, you'll understand why Power Lunch isn't a fun, leisurely activity. In this game, players have to try to match up celebrities for power lunches. You can put them together in obvious ways, similar to the way you would play canasta or rummy (which no one under 50 understands), or you can try to convince your opponents that they would be eating together for some other reason. It's seems likely that "secret love affair" would come up a lot in this game, the only exciting part of a task that's no better than trying to find a way to keep your creepy uncle Dwayne from hitting on your attractive sorority sisters at your wedding.
Who's Your Daddy?

This game is really only suited for people who enjoy daytime talk shows where paternity is a highly debated subject. Each participant plays both a man and a woman (two separate people, not the topic for another episode of the same talk show). On your turn, you're playing a woman who can decide whether to get pregnant or try to convince other players that they are your child's father so that you can receive child support. The rest of the time, you play a man who has to deny paternity and try to avoid court-ordered payments. In the end, the last one to run out of money and flee the country wins. Besides developing your character, your best hope of entertainment is to offer to read the results of paternity tests in your best Jerry Springer voice or just randomly shout, "You don't know me!" to complete the trashy-show atmosphere.
Antiques Roadshow: The Game

The one thing that could possibly be worse than watching Antiques Roadshow on TV is sitting through a game based on the program. The PBS show allows regular people to bring in items they own, either through family estates or garage sales, and have them appraised by a professional. The show can be mildly entertaining when a particularly annoying person finds out their piece isn't worth anything or when someone brings in something worth tens of thousands of dollars. But the game doesn't offer any of that. All you get to do is guess the values of an item based on a photo of it and hope that you get it right just so the game ends faster. Now if the game came with actual priceless treasures, that'd be a different story altogether.
Who's Having This Baby Anyway?

When you think of a fun game night with friends, you probably imagine learning the disgusting details of pregnancy and childbirth together. Well, maybe if you're a hormonal pregnant woman who wants to spread her misery. This game claims to keep you from having to read a bunch of boring books about pregnancy since all the information an expecting mother needs to know (and her friends never wanted to know) is on the cards. It takes you from conception all the way through 40 long weeks of pregnancy, and the first person to dilate to 10 centimeters wins the game. This is probably not a game anyone would want to play on a full stomach or with small children since information on pregnancy can be pretty traumatizing.
Capital Punishment

Sometimes the best way to push a political agenda is through a fun board game, especially if the goal is to kill people or at least put them in prison for a very long time. Capital Punishment gives each player four criminals — a murderer, a rapist, an arsonist, and a kidnapper. Each person also has 15 innocent citizens. Your goal is to get your criminals into life imprisonment, death row, or the electric chair before they can victimize all of your citizens and before your opponents can properly punish their own characters. To stall justice for your competitors, you can use your "liberal" cards to free their prisoners. If their criminals are on the street, they can commit violent crimes against their citizens (who then obviously go to heaven).
Dr. Ruth's Game of Good Sex

If your sex life is so bad that you're turning to a board game (or Dr. Ruth, for that matter) for help, you've probably got bigger problems than figuring out the worst games out there. Dr. Ruth's Game of Good Sex can be played by up to four couples at a time for an awkward evening or by one couple who wants to test each other's sexual knowledge. As you move around the board, you gain "arousal points," but it's kind of doubtful that you'll actually be too aroused by the time the game is over, especially after discussing issues such as menstruation and warts. It's hard to tell which is worse: the board game or the video game of the same name. Either one seems like a sad waste of time. At least the name is obvious enough that you won't accidentally pick it up for a kid's birthday party.