Battleship: It's All in the Game

I love Battleship. No, not the movie extravaganza that’s apparently dead in the water after a slower-than-expected domestic opening. I’m talking about the original game, which dates from World War II. It’s a game to which I was introduced by my parents, and it couldn’t be simpler. All you need is two players, two pencils, and two special spiral-bound game pads. Your pad gives you a grid on which you block out your fleet: cruisers, destroyers, a battleship. Then on a second grid, you get a fixed number of chances to take potshots at your opponent’s unseen navy. You call out your coordinates, and your opposite number must admit to the number of times you’ve struck his various sea-going vessels. The goal is to locate and sink his entire fleet before yours heads down to Davy Jones’ locker.

The low-tech nature of Battleship appeals to my Luddite sensibilities. But my kids played the more energy-intensive electronic version that first appeared in 1977. Same game, but with lots more bells and whistles. Electronic Battleship was followed a decade later by Electronic Talking Battleship, and then a plethora of video spin-offs. And now, of course, the 2012 film, which somehow introduces romance, a complex backstory, and an attack by critters from outer space. And – I’m sure – enough death and destruction to satisfy Hollywood’s insatiable appetite for blood and guts.

I love movies, and I’m not opposed to blood and guts (or even alien attacks), so long as these are confined to a movie screen. But I wish Hollywood would leave my favorite games alone. Years ago it was Clue that underwent the Hollywood treatment. And now this.

Not to sound impossibly old-fashioned, but I have fond memories of my childhood, when the family would assemble around the dining room table to play a game. I’ve tried to pass that enthusiasm on to my children. For me, anyway, card games are a little too mentally taxing to be a source of relaxation. (After a round of Hearts, my father -- the numbers whiz -- had a maddening tendency to point out to me where I’d gone wrong.) My kids and I like word games (Boggle, Bananagrams), knowledge games (Trivial Pursuit), and silly games that rely on chance as well as strategy. I consider the children’s game Sorry, with its maddeningly sudden reversals of fortune, the perfect light-hearted pastime (as well as a great metaphor for life, come to that.)

But today it’s all about computer games, and the various electronic goodies that a tech-savvy generation finds entertaining. It’s true you don’t need to play computer games in complete isolation. Through gaming you can actually interact with friends who live halfway around the globe. But sitting at your computer can also be a most solitary form of fun. I’m also pondering how so many young people (and their older relatives) now watch movies on a personal screen, thus sidestepping the communal experience that for me makes film so compelling. (If you’ve seen the original Rocky in a theatre, you know what I mean.)

When my daughter was a middle-schooler, she made a new friend. Jessica surprised me with her in-depth knowledge of my entire Roger Corman output. In her household, it seems, no one gathered around a table, either to play games or even to eat dinner. You took your food to your room, where you could watch TV in privacy, at any hour that suited your fancy. That’s how a twelve-year-old girl came to be an expert on Body Chemistry and Stripped to Kill. Someday will she be Sorry about what she’s missed?