As great as Jenga is, there’s gotta be more than one great tower building game, right? We present several failed attempts to remake Jenga, and one game that gives the classic a run for it’s money!
As with most classic games, Jenga has had many attempts at reinvention. Unfortunately, most of them aren’t very good at all. What the world really needs is a totally different take on competitive tower building. We don’t ever want to stop playing Jenga, we just want to switch it up every now and then.
It all started back in 2003 with Jenga Xtreme. We’re not sure why it was Xtreme, other than that it was 2003 and everything under the sun was XTREME!
That wasn’t actually what Jenga Xtreme was like. It was waaaaaaay lamer than that. The real Jenga Xtreme simply took original Jenga and turned all the pieces into rhombuses. Now wait, don’t go run to Google trying to remember what a rhombus is. I’ll give you a picture of the real Jenga Xtreme:
Seems crazy right? A different paint job and oddly shaped pieces surely must make this a party in a box. Well no, no it’s not. It turns out that when you sit down to play it, Jenga Xtreme plays pretty much just like regular Jenga, to the point where after about 10 minutes somebody inevitably says “hey let’s play real Jenga!” That’s when you realize you wasted $30, and you didn’t even get to drive a monster truck into a tower.
So where do you go from there? In 2008, Donkey Kong Jenga came out.
Now this was a game that had geek written all over it. As a huge Nintendo fan, I excitedly tore this thing open to play the first round. As I pored over the rules, it seemed like a great way to incorporate new twists into Jenga while implementing a Donkey Kong theme.
If you look closely, you’ll notice each of the bricks has holes drilled into the ends. Each player receives a Mario (or Jumpman for you purists) token that has a peg attached to it’s back. Long story short, aside from playing normal Jenga each turn, players must remove their Mario pegs and move them up a few levels, inserting them into the end of a new block.
Sound great, right? It’s awful! By the time you get to turn #2, everyone has realized that the holes drilled into the ends of each Jenga block are wildly inconsistent in their size. Many of the blocks are such a tight fit you are almost guaranteed to knock over the tower trying to insert your peg. After a few rounds of having the tower knocked over way too early in the game, you’ll chuck all the Mario stuff and just play normal Jenga with all the cool blocks.
There are other variants, such as Las Vegas Casino Jenga, which combines all the fun of smoke filled slot parlors with tower building; and Truth or Dare Jenga, which turns an innocent tower building game into an awkard pre-teen coming-of-age adventure. The one game that got it all right though was a little known 1991 Milton Bradley release named Bandu.
As I mentioned before, we don’t need a new Jenga, we need a competitor! This game is decidedly un-Jenga. Bandu is what you get when throw 30 insanely shaped wooden pieces into a box and force players to build towers with them. Players take turns picking up awkwardly shaped pieces and forcing the player to their left to add it to their tower. You can pass, but only a few times each game. Once you are out of passes, you are up to the mercy of the player handing you pieces. This game gets insane. Take my word for it, after a few games, you will be building towers pretty close to the one on the cover of the box above. That’s not false advertising.
Originally made as a German game called Bausack, Milton Bradley wisely decided to change it’s name before bringing the game to America. Unfortunately they picked an equally weird name in Bandu. Serious Bandu players have imported deluxe editions from Germany that come with even more building pieces, resulting in some really insane towers. Check out the image gallery for this game at Board Game Geek.
Unfortunately, you can’t find Bandu in stores anymore. The good news is, you can easily find this game used online for about $30, which is pretty much in line with what you’d expect to pay for a brand new of solid wood construction these days anyway.
If you know of any other crazy Jenga remakes or good building games, leave a comment!
