Tic tac toe, four in a row

Traditionally the arena of combat wherein eldest son would best dad (as depicted on the front of the box) in some gaming rites of passage (“look dad, diagonally!”), Connect Four was the insanely addictive board game destined to split families asunder across the globe. Originally marketed as The Captain’s Mistress on account of a rumour traditionally linking it with Captain Cook (he was playing it, not shagging it, so the story goes), the definitive ‘70s edition is part-owned by – and why are we not surprised by this? - David Bowie.

A fiendishly simple premise – it’s basically noughts and crosses¹ – you’d drop coloured counters into a vertically positioned 7x6 holed board and compete to see who would be first to get four colours in a row². Launched in the early 1970s by MB Games “the vertical strategy” game had an ace climax wherein upon winning the victor would shout “Connect Four!” and then pull a flap out from under the board causing the stacked counters to clatter out all over the melamine surface of the kitchen table³. Although there were other “vertical strategy” games available (cf. the safe-cracking style stratagem of Downfall), Connect Four had an alluring purity to it that made it seem all the more desirable. This was a thinker’s game, frill-free.

Rather like in poker, you could judge the ability and personality of your opponent by the way in which they played with the “chips”. One who stacked their counters into a tower would most likely be loath to commit, worried that making a move might cut off other opportunities. Whereas your counter-fiddler would be more liable to drop ‘em into the grid like lightning, hoping to set the pace of the game and win by forcing an error in their opponent. The Apprentice would’ve been a much shorter TV series if they’d just got all the wannabe business tycoons to play a quick game of Connect Four on day one.

A family-friendly bright-blue plastic Backgammon or Go, Connect Four was for your chin-rubbers and that boy genius about to take dad out diagonally. And David Bowie. Still heavily marketed by MB, we’re advised that current editions are rather smaller than the mid ’70s definitive set (with the exception of those annoying gigantic pub versions), taking a good few inches off all aspects of the game - and a couple of decibels off that all important victory clatter too.