D'Allemagne, Henry René.

Le noble jeu de l'oie en France de 1640 à 1950.

      D'Allemagne, Henry René. Le noble jeu de l'oie en France de 1640 à 1950. Quarante-huit tableaux etnotices. La vie quotidienne à Paris de 1820 à 1824, d'aprés les lithographies de Marlet et de Carle Vernet. Paris: Grund, 1950-1951. 4to. (335 x 250 mm). 237p., cartonnage illustre en couleurs sur le premier plat. (Reliure de l"editeur.) Original edition of 700, this is no. 300. Ce magnifique ouvrage de reference sur le sujet, est illustree par 110 illustrations dans le texte et 48 gravures hors-texte dont 9 en couleurs de Jean Kerhor. The Game of the Goose (Das Gänsespiel (german), Gioco dell'oca (italian), Jeu de l'oie (french), Juego de la Oca (spanish), Ganzenbord (dutch), Gaspelet (swedish)) is thought to be the prototype for many of the commercial European racing board games of recent centuries. The game is therefore mostly played in Europe and seen as family entertainment. Commercial versions of the game appeared in the 1880s and 1890s, and feature typical old European characteristics such as an old well and kids in clothes from the period. It is claimed that the game was originally a gift from Francesco I de' Medici of Florence to King Philip II of Spain sometime between 1574 and 1587. In June 1597 John Wolfe had attested that the game existed in London. In his 1899 novel Le Testament d'un excentrique, Jules Verne uses the United States of America as a giant real-life Game of the Goose board, on which seven players race each other in pursuit of a $60,000,000 inheritance. The game was also the basis for a game/stunt show in Spain, El gran juego de la oca (The Big Goose Game). It ran from 1993 to 1995, and again in 1998 as El nuevo juego de la oca (The New Goose Game). A version of this show was also produced in Italy. The Royal Game of the Goose requires 2 or more players, a gameboard, 2 dice, and 1 counter per player. The gameboard pattern is a spiral of 63 fields, from the outside to the inside. Many fields have special hazards or benefits for players who land on them. The object of the game is to travel along the spiral from field 1 to field 63, and the first player who successfully lands on field 63 by an exact roll of the dice is the winner. On each turn, a player rolls the two dice and advances the counter along the spiral by as many fields as the sum of the two dice. The player must deal with any situation on the space landed on, be they hazards or benefits. Whenever you land on a field with a goose, you move double the sum of the dice you just rolled. If that puts you on yet another goose, advance again, until you no longer land on a goose. (You may land in a trap yet, after all this wild-goose chasing.) One of the attractions of the Game of the Goose was its potential as a gambling game. Players would ante 4 tokens at the beginning of the game and pay one token at each of the 6 special fields. If a player landed on another player's field, both paid one token and changed places. The winner took the pot. Reference: wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_of_the_Goose; Riddle of the Labyrinth. www.gamepuzzles.com.