Behind the Classics - Battleship

Battleship 

Gotta love a static target.... 

Battleship may owe its origins to the French game L'Attaque and appears to have been invented during WWI. However, there are reports of Russian sailors playing a similar game pre-WWI. The first US commercial version of the game was called Salvo, and was published in 1931.

There were other versions of the game printed in the 1930s and 1940s, including Milton Bradley's Broadsides: A Game of Naval Strategy. These early editions of the game consisted of pre-printed pads of paper rather than the plastic clam shells with pegs we love today.

Those plastic boards were introduced in 1967 by Milton Bradley and in 1977 they released a computerized version. Battleship was actually one of the earliest games to be produced as a computer game, with a version being released for the Z80 Compucolor in 1979. 

2012 saw a movie released based on the board game (34% on rotten tomatoes!).

Did you play this one as a kid? Perhaps you still play it? I remember this being one of the first competitive games I understood quickly and could compete in effectively.

Good luck finding the little guy! 

Don’t forget to attend out DCG Board Game Tournament next Saturday! Battleship will be one of the games in the completion – you can brush up on your strategy here.