NEW BOARD GAME PROMISES GOOD OLD BOY FUN

HALIFAX (CUP) - It’s unchtime. Over in the stu- lent pub, four good-old- joys and one woman are rowded around the lat- st Trivial Pursuit clone, olling dice and slugging ack a few brews. :

A card is picked: “Sud- len loss of appetite as you tice the cafeteria wait- ess has considerable facial lair.”” Everyone laughs, nd the player marks down he loss of one Social Point n his scorecard. Another ian gives up $30 after be- 1g informed he has just

ubscribed to a porn mag- .

zine.

‘Wanna Be a College iraduate,Eh?’ is the first oard game about uni- ersity life to hit book- tore shelves. The grand unching was held last reek at St.Mary’s Univer- ity, where the game’s cre- tors Bob Smith and Dave Viseman attend classes.

“One night in a smoke- lled college room, we nought, hey we’d had a ood time in college. And re wanted to .incorporate

hat idea into a game,” said.

Smith, a fourth-year biol- ogy student.

“It just came to me all at once.”

The project took two years to get off the ground. According to Wiseman, a geologist-in-training, he and Smith “practically dropped out last year” to complete the game.

‘Wanna’ requires play- ers to answer skill-testing questions about sports, fi- nances, social life and aca- demics. Count up the points and move up to sec- ond and third year status. Graduate first and you win.

But you can get caught along the way.

An “affair with Profes- sor Bendova” will garner one Academic Credit and two Social Points And a ‘Let’s Party’ card offering a “two day ripper for $250” will cost you an Academic Point. The ‘Sexual En- counter’ square could mean a new experience with Ma- zola oil.

“It was going to be a cult game with lots of drugs and alcohol. We

changed that somewhat so people wouldn’t be too of- fended,” explains Smith, a beer never far from his hand. ;

Some 3,000 of those in- offensive skill-testing ques- tions were pared down to 1,080 academic puz- zlers and 900 social, sports and financial brain- teasers. Smith says the questions come from friends’ personal experiences, school text- books and dictionaries.

Smith’s dad _ financed the whole deal. That works out to $20,000 for the ac- tual game and first pro- duction run of 1000, plus another $5000 for lawyer's fees, a copyright, and a graphic artist’s salary.

The initial production run won’t even cover costs, the partners say. And they’ve already missed their origi- nal launching date by three weeks.

Wiseman says the game should have been ready at the beginning of the school term, when students with newly-cashed loans were

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buying texts and picking up gadgets in the bookstores.

Now it’s just in time for the Christmas market, at $29.95 a pop.

There’s no money left for an advertising cam- paign, but Nova Scotia will be blanketed. Smith’s

cousin in southern Ontario

will distribute 500 copies. Wiseman says

the board game’s name will

help.

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The patently Canadian ‘Eh’ will “stick in the mind”, he hopes, and the length of the name will jolt consumers.

If successful, a_ sec- ond production will follow, enabling the entrepreneurs to distribute throughout Canada and eventually, the United States, said Wise-

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