The Game of Life is one of my least favorite games to play. It has zero strategy and few decisions. And, with these decisions, you must make the most optimum one, or risk (another classic game) losing the game. One of the later editions adds in the gambling aspect, but still, it is not enough to save this 1960 Milton Bradley classic.

I begrudgingly bought The Game of Life: Rivals Edition. I was not looking forward to playing it. After the modestly entertaining Monopoly Rivals Edition, I had a little more interest in playing Life: Rivals Edition.

So, I grabbed Edward, who likes The Game of Life, and made him sit down and play the Rivals Edition with me. Let’s see how it went.

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I don’t want to say that Edward is all in on this IP book, but as we were strolling through Target, he spotted a game. His pitch, “It’s an IP, Dad. We need it for the book!” So, without hesitation, we added Buffalo Games’s Tecmo Bowl to the cart. It wasn’t that hard of a sale for me though. I loved this Nintendo game back in the day. While I prefer the Tecmo Super Bowl to its predecessor, I was not about to let this chance at nostalgia pass me by.

In Tecmo Bowl, which came out this year, 2025, you and your opponent manage football teams in an effort to outsmart, outthink, and outscore them. We got home that evening, put on Sunday Night Football, sat down, selected our teams, and flipped the provided coin to start Tecmo Bowl. Let’s see how it went.

Trophy Idea

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Another fun series of games that I discovered through my research was the Hasbro "Rivals Editions." In this series, Hasbro took one of its classics and boiled it down to a two-player, mano y mano showdown. I was interested in how you could boil some of these games down to two players, for sure. So, first up, Monopoly! Grab your biggest rival and let’s battle it out over Monopoly: Rivals Edition!

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