I've been a big fan of the movie 'Escape from New York' ever since seeing it on video for the first time around 1983. I missed seeing it on the big screen by a couple of years, DAMN! I've heard rumblings about a remake, but nah, not for me.
About eight years ago I became aware of a board game based on the movie. I would've researched the game anyway, but was further spurred on after learning that the game was made by TSR. The game wasn't produced in quantities anywhere near what the majority of D&D products of the same time were, so the scarce number of available games and high demand for them has driven prices pretty high. Although I really wanted a game, the prices were simply more than I was willing to pay and in the cases of still sealed and high quality condition games, that I could pay for. There are a fair amount of game reviews and pictures of the game online and I found out about a website that would allow me to buy a copy of the rules, and did so. Using those resources I tried to make my own copy of the Escape from New York game, but still lacked enough to make it functionally playable.
I had pretty much given up on obtaining a game until this past Christmas when, much to my surprise, a still sealed game was given to me. The gift giver and myself were somewhat skeptical that the cellophane seal was original and that the game had truly been unopened. After all how hard can it be to simply reseal the game box? That doubt disappeared when I ripped the seal, opened the box and found pristine, glossy contents, including sheets of game cards whose lines of perforations hadn't been punched. Also, right on top of everything was a TSR catalog, from '81 when the Escape game was produced. Now I know that there were hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of these catalogs sent out but I still think it's pretty cool and worth posting a few pictures of:
The Escape game is pretty fun to play, faithful and similar to the movie in it's game play, and HARD to win! Each player (up to 4) starts in a different designated location that you can see in the photo of the game board. The object is to move about NYC and gain clue cards at other designated locations besides the one you started at to learn the location of and then gain either A): The President, or B): the Tape. Again, very similar to the movie, but in the game a player doesn't need both. Once a player(s) has one or the other they can win by escaping New York by using the Glider card or by having a map (clue) card that allows a player to cross one of the bridges that can be seen in the game board photo. One of the aspects that make the game difficult is that there are scenarios where a player can lose cards they've obtained. You can have the President card, a map of Bridge #1 card and be on your way to crossing that Bridge and winning, but every turn a player draws an encounter card. If a player loses an encounter the result is a loss of a card and then they might have to start searching for it all over again. Also, another player can ambush you and possibly take some of your cards.
The different colors of the hexes represent the different levels of danger in NYC. Red and orange hexes represent areas on the higher end of the danger scale with the possibilities of very dangerous encounters. White and green are not as bad, but you can still have encounters in any hex. In order to obtain clues to get the items you need a player must travel into the orange and red hexes.
One of the other aspects of the game that makes it faithful to the movie is that the players have the potential to encounter all the other major characters in NYC: Romero (the Dukes weird right hand man who in the beginning of the movie told the Police Chief "You touch me he dies. If you're not in the air in thirty seconds he dies. You come back in he dies.)", Cabbie, Maggie, Brain, the Duke and Slag (the gladiator with the baseball bat). This is one of my favorite things about the game. How the encounters work is that when one occurs the player has a choice to either avoid, befriend or fight an encounter, and rolling a six side determines if that action was successful. Befriending certain characters is to the advantage of a player, for instance befriending Cabbie gives the player use of the cab and better movement abilities. Kind of trippy, but a player can actually befriend characters totally hostile to Snake in the movie, like the Duke (although you have to offer him the best pistol in the game to do so). More often than not players have encounters with non-major characters in the movie, usually single or groups of different gang members.
