Stratego, Plugged

This week, I was at the local thrift store when I discovered an old friend: a functional copy of Electronic Stratego! (He was on sale for a buck.) In case you have forgotten how this lovely contraption looks, or if you've never met one, here's a brief sample: (Warning! 80's nostalgia ahead!)

Some of you may be asking, "What is that?!", to which I reply, "It's like Stratego! By Milton Bradley! A classic game of strategy and... um... 'go'? Look it up!"

So, now some of you are probably asking, "Right... so... how's it different than normal Stratego?" Well. Let me tell you how it's different from the vanilla edition.

To start off, the scale is a little different. It's got an 8x10 grid (instead of 10x10), and only 24 pieces (instead of the usual 40).

More importantly, the electronic aspect opens up a lot more functionality. There are three major variations in gameplay that result from having Electronic Stratego instead of "plain-ol'" Stratego:

One: Hidden bombs. The little compartments on either player's side of the board let players place bombs under their pieces, and they activate only when stepped on by enemy players. (Unless your board's malfunctioning, in which case your men might be fair game as well.) One wrong step, and KABLAAM!

Two: Piece identities remain secret. To engage in combat with an enemy piece, you merely push down on the attacking piece and then on the defending piece, and the computer informs you whether you won or not. And that's all it tells you. Did you kill a scout? A marshal? Who knows? It adds a lot of uncertainty to the game. (You don't have to play this way, but it is awesome; and to do this using a normal board, you'd need a third party just to compare pieces during attacks. Good luck finding anyone to volunteer for that.)

Three: Awesome sound effects. From the moment you turn it on, the thing emits a soundtrack worthy of an early Atari game. The interminable "drum roll"-esque sound (audible in the above snippet) accompanies your every move, and snippets of notable songs pepper the play. (The manual falls all over itself calling out each song; when attacking, you'll hear "a few bars of The William Tell Overture" instead of "heart-pumping attack music". Maybe it helped them corner the market of the culturally elite?)

Anyway, if you're in my General neck of the woods soon, Flag me down; I'll Scout out four AA batteries and we can Marshal our forces to engage in Major two-player electronic melee! (It'll be the Bomb!)