Category Archives: driving games
My Favorite French Card Game About Driving
Fellow lovers of card games, you could do a lot worse than the lovely French driving game Mille Bornes.
I first played Mille Bornes on my family’s Commodore 64 computer as a lad. Sure, there were snazzier games with lovely sounds and graphics like Impossible Mission and Bruce Lee, but Mille Bornes was pretty darned fun for a text-based card game.
One year my brother gave me a set of Mille Bornes cards for my birthday, though I honestly haven’t played the game with real cards as much as on the computer.
I was very happy to have recently discovered mille, a distribution of this game that comes bundled with flavors of UNIX operating systems. I imagine this game has been around for a while, perhaps since the 1980’s. Thank you, mille programmer Ken Arnold!
w00t! Check out those two safeties! I have a feeling it’s gonna be a good hand.
Please feel free to share your favorite card game, even it isn’t French, and doesn’t involve driving.
Knee Crap On Equals No Parking Backwards
In my stupid driving game I just posted about, I included a few sound samples of me phonetically sounding out some street signs backwards.
Now, just because I’m reading them backwards certainly doesn’t mean that if you reverse the sound files, that they will be recognizably reciting the signage text.
Still, I was curious. I thought there was a good chance that my “Pots” sound sample played backwards would sound like “Stop”, seeing as I didn’t change the ‘o’ vowel sound or the consonants, and it was only one syllable.
Sure enough, it does sound quite a bit like “Stop”, although the ‘p’ sound ends a bit abruptly.
Click here for my reversed “Stop” re-reversed.
So, I gave a listen to the other sound files as well. For the most part, reversing the other sound samples (including No Parking) produced gibberish.
However, I was shocked to discover that my reversing of the words “No Parking” (I recited them as “Knee Crap On”) sounded quite strikingly like “No Parking”.
Click here to hear my reversing of the words “No Parking” re-reversed.
Weird, huh?
A Very, Very Stupid Driving Game
Here’s a game that I came up with during a dull car ride years ago, when I was bored out of my skull.
My brother and I cackle like monkeys on nitrous oxide when we get on a roll with this game. For lack of better words, I’ll call this the Stupid Backwards Sign Reading Game.
RULES
Okay, here’s the game.
Read any signs you see backwards, pronouncing them how you think they would sound phonetically. So, if you saw a stop sign, you’d pronounce it as “Pots”. It’s a nice touch to speak as if your voice is being played backwards.
I like to read the signs from top to bottom, right to left. The right-to-left reading naturally feeds into the backwards reading and speaking. Trust me.
There really is no concept of winning in this game. It’s all about the fun and stupidity.
IDEAL CONFIGURATION
Games are best played in an urban setting, where there is a lot of signage.
To get a really good game going, the people playing should be passengers rather than driving the car, as it will take a lot of concentration.
Here’s the ideal configuration (assuming you have a four-seater car):
Note that the driver is perturbed, but not enough to end the game that the front and rear right passengers are enjoying. It’s nice to have the players on the same side of the car, so each can see what sign the other is attempting to read backwards.
And as for Mister Fussypants in the back left seat, who you’re driving insane with your dumbass backwards pronunciations and chuckling? Well, who gives a damn what he thinks, right?
SOME EXAMPLES:
Click here for a sample of how you would say this during the game.
Okay, that was easy. How about this one?
Click here for the sound.
Oh, so we’re getting cocky, are we? Try this, ya smartass:
Click here if you dare.
Happy Driving And/Or Gaming!