Stuff I'm Saving

This 20 page catalog is all that remains of an old copy of the game Feudal that my parents owned, and that I tried in vain to teach myself to play in a one-player fashion while still far too young for the real rules to make any sense. In some ways it is more interesting today than the game ever was. It is dated Nov. 1, 1981 and includes a complete listing of all games available at the time as well as prices for individual component of each game, should you need to replace them. Avalon Hill was one of the premier providers of wargames and strategy games for decades until it was absorbed into Hasbro in 1998. Today it exists as a subsidiary of Wizards of the Coast where they continue to publish a handful of the most successful games from the over 300 titles it once owned.

The catalog is broken into sections by genre, including Fantasy/Science Fiction, Strategy/Wargames, Leisure Time/Family Games, Sports Games, and finally “Microcomputer Games”. This last section, something Avalon Hill had only started offering just the year before, features some very early computer games available on both 5 1/4″ disk or cassette tape, complete with system requirements table (anywhere from 16K to 48K of memory) and was reserved for “those elite owners of home computers”.

Beyond this there was also a Miscellaneous section where you could order hex paper, dice and other such requisite gaming paraphernalia, a Magazines section which really just included the one Magazine they published, called The General, and a Discontinued Parts list, a list of parts still available for games that were no longer in print.

I have provided the entire catalog in pdf format below. Try not to cry while reading it.

1981 Avalon Hill Games Catalog (pdf)