childhood activities that never(?) became games

[Kid Ice]

I always thought the following childhood games would translate well into videogames, but I've never seen games based on them. I'm sure there are Flash games out there, but I'm talking about console games. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong!

Snowball fighting - unbelievable that there has never been a full on snowball fighting game. I actually made a snowball fighting RPG in Hypercard years ago.

King of the Hill - for some reason VCS Spiderman always kind of reminded me of King of the Hill. Very simple game; find a huge mound of dirt near a construction site, whoever gets to the top first is King of the Hill, until he gets taken down. My favorite move in this game was to lift the body of the opponent before throwing him down the hill, so he would be momentarily airborne, into another kid climbing up.

Kill the Man - kind of like King of the Hill with a football. Best played with about thirty kids. Everyone goes after the kid with the ball. Probably the most violent childhood game, as the goal was to literally hurt the kid that held the ball too long.

Monkey in the Middle - many involuntary games took place in elementary school, usually involving the victim's baseball cap

Run the Bases - sort of an inverted Monkey in the Middle

Sledding - I mean just on regular plastic sleds or innertubes. Could be a mini-game on the snowball fighting game!

Kickball - perennial PE favorite

More?

[slapdash]

I've always had this image of a MMO version of King of the Hill in my head...

"Kill The Man"? When I was growing up, that game had the decidedly un-PC name Smear the Queer. Bad name, but so much fun. We used a bunch of foil that started as a ball but got smushed into a hockey puck shape by a leg cast, and which we referred to (no idea why) as the dinger.

Kickball and snowball fighting do seem like naturals... There was a pretty fun snowball Flash game a few years back. Someone should port that to the DS or something. :-)

[Greg2600]

Easy one: the Great game of Wiffleball. Nabisco made a Flash web game of it a few years ago, but that I think is the only one.

[Vectorman0]

Easy one: the Great game of Wiffleball. Nabisco made a Flash web game of it a few years ago, but that I think is the only one.

It was done for DS. It's fairly uncommon too.

[Dr. Morbis]

Ski or Die on NES has a snowball fight segment, and it's actually pretty fun. It's not "full on" I guess, but at least its something.

[tom]

Eat the Worm. Feed worms to little boys and girls, who pukes first, loses.

Doctor. Said to be a childhood's favorite, explore each other, find out what's different, and why.

Doorbell ringing. Go along roads ring doorbells, run away. Make sure you don't get caught out, or even a Michael Myers-type of person comes running after you with huge knifes.

[zer0cool]

When i was a kid we played "smeer the queer"...i was a small child and usually got suckered into this game only to end up hurt and whinning on my way home.

[Steven]

Glad no one mentioned TAG, otherwise I would recommend trying PSX/Saturn's GRID RUNNER

Doorbell ringing. Go along roads ring doorbells, run away. Make sure you don't get caught out, or even a Michael Myers-type of person comes running after you with huge knifes.

LMAO! You did this, too? Me and my friends did this once... commonly known as "Ding Dong Ditch"

Ahhh, to be 10 years old...

[MagicMajenta]

Hey did anyone ever call those videos they advertise on TV where you could pay COD (cash on delivery) and have them sent to random addresses on the phone book/school directory. I did that back then and would laugh/giggle about it. Man, those days bring back memories no matter how old you are now.

[GillianSeed]

Speaking of kids games, I always wanted to try the Atari VCS version of hide and seek, Sneak'n Peek.

[Mad Gear]

There's a snowball fight FPS in the South Park game (iirc).

[Pantechnicon]

In the documentary "Once Upon Atari" Rob Zdybel talked about how Atari's infamous marketing department was always after its programmers to make a game called "Rock Fight". If I ever get off my butt and learn how to program in 6502 assembly this will probably be my contribution to the homebrew scene. I envision it playing something like Activision Tennis but with health meters and little blood splatters. What...none of you ever had rock fights?

Another one that would be cool to see on a modern console would be something like "Neighborhood Stunt Jumper" in honor of those days when little boys throughout America did their best to emulate Evel Knievel. What you'd do in the game is first go around the neighborhood trading, stealing or doing odd jobs for the stunt components. Then you take what you've gotten and engineer your own ramp and add a gimmick like, say, jumping over two cats in a five-gallon bucket. Then you launch your bicycle over your contraption, earning "cool points" for successful jumps which you can trade in for bicycle upgrades (helmets, banana seats, etc). Do it all in Animal Crossing-style graphics and it would be perfect.

[Flack]

Around the age of twelve or thirteen, my friends and I began sneaking out on a regular basis. Around midnight, a dozen or so kids would all sneak out and meet out on the street corner. From there we would do all kinds of stuff; wandering the streets, avoiding detection, checking mailboxes, setting of firecrackers ... all kinds of stuff. That might make a fun GTA-Style game.

Also a fireworks-related game (no, not Fireworks Construction Set) might be fun. You would spend your budget buying fireworks, and then set them off. Maybe you could set up plastic green army men or your sister's Barbie dolls and blow them up too.

Has there ever been a game involving setting up dominos to knock down, or setting up card houses? Sounds like those are right up the Wii controller's alley!

[drewbrim]

Around the age of twelve or thirteen, my friends and I began sneaking out on a regular basis. Around midnight, a dozen or so kids would all sneak out and meet out on the street corner. From there we would do all kinds of stuff; wandering the streets, avoiding detection, checking mailboxes, setting of firecrackers ... all kinds of stuff. That might make a fun GTA-Style game.

This was me. That GTA-esque games needs to have an "egg the house of your first ex-girlfriend" mission.

[Griking]

Most of these ideas seem like mini-games to me.

The closest thing ot a snowball fight game I know of is in WoW when winter starts. Ironforge becomes one large snowball fight.

[Kid Ice]

Another one that would be cool to see on a modern console would be something like "Neighborhood Stunt Jumper" in honor of those days when little boys throughout America did their best to emulate Evel Knievel.

Oh yeah, that was a biggie in our neighborhood. One time my brother loosened all the screws on his bike then jumped off a ramp so the entire bike would come apart in mid-air.

street/parking lot football - or how to play football in the middle of winter I cracked a rib in one memorable parking lot game (tackled by a concrete barrier- good times). The best was playing on a snowy street (sliding into cars and whatnot). Only required a min of 4 people. Watch the hilarity ensue, and the injuries mount.

We would play football on a frozen lake. I almost got a concussion punting the ball.

[riffraff]

what about that game where you take turns punching each other in the arm as hard as you can until someone gives up? Of course this usually meant not having much use of your arm for much of the day

[Snapple]

King of the Hill is done in a ton of FPSes. It's just done with guns and such instead of on the playground. Same concept though.

Street football has obviously been done in NFL Street.

Snowball fighting... South Park is the main example, but there's also a snowball fight in the tutorial level of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance.

I'm sure there are a ton of games that have had sledding, not even counting bobsledding from the winter Olympic games.

I'm almost positive there have been multiple games with bug collecting in them, but my mind is blank.

[Steve W]

I don't remember if it's Marathon 2 or Marathon Infinity for the Mac that has a 'Kill The Guy With The Ball' type game in it's multiplayer set-up. You don't have a ball, it's a skull, and when you have it, you are defenseless against all your rocketlauncher-wielding buddies. All you can do is stay alive as long as you can. Great game.

[theshizzle3000]

I've always had this image of a MMO version of King of the Hill in my head...

"Kill The Man"? When I was growing up, that game had the decidedly un-PC name Smear the Queer. Bad name, but so much fun. We used a bunch of foil that started as a ball but got smushed into a hockey puck shape by a leg cast, and which we referred to (no idea why) as the dinger.

Kickball and snowball fighting do seem like naturals... There was a pretty fun snowball Flash game a few years back. Someone should port that to the DS or something. :-)

We called it Smear the Queer when I was a kid, but of course we had no idea what that meant. Ironically I still refer to it as that if I were to play it today or tommorrow.