The Captain America Game (1966)

This is the rare 1966 version released by Milton Bradley. Players took the roll of Captain American and Bucky trying to be the first to reach the secret hideout and thwart the evil plans of the Sky Spider! (Who was he???)

The game is simple spin and move. The only additional point in the mechanics of the game is that players could land on locations with friends of Cap's (Thor, Spider-Man, Marvel Girl, Wasp, Giant-Man and Iron Man) and get 'help' - (extra spaces). But if you landed on a villain's space, you lost spaces, or full turns.

The villains included some of the lesser characters of Marvel Comics of the day - and ironically, only one is a Captain America villain!

Characters drawn on the board game in full color include: Captain America, Bucky, The Mandarin and the Destroyer.

The villains are an eclectic lot: The Mandarin, Titanium Man, and The General (from Iron Man's story lines); Loki and the Destroyer (from Thor's pages of Journey into Mystery); Lucifer (who barely made an appearance in X-Men comics - issue 9?); the Molten Man (from Spider-Man); and then the only Captain America foe, Zemo. Of course, by this time in the comics, Zemo had already caused Bucky's death, and had in turn died in a battle with Cap! (It was an early Avenger's storyline.) But we were kids! What did we care!!!

This game is redeemed by the great art work on the board and the box. (Looks like the villains on the board might be by Don Heck working from Jack Kirby layouts, though the larger Cap and Bucky item might be vintage 1940's Kirby. The box cover certainly looks like 1960's Kirby. Since this came out at the same time as the first Marvel animated series, which were limited animations of actual comic panels, it is also likely these are art pieces simply lifted from existing art. (The Mandarin's piece is from the cover of one of his earliest appearances). This would explain the Heck artwork, since he was currently doing duty on most of the titles featuring these characters.)

The game originally came with a comic - one of the few early efforts at cross-over collectibles.