‘The Hobbit’ Is Getting Its Own Boardgame. I Knew It Was a Good Idea to Build Three Hotels on Shire Avenue

Before computer games, before Angry Birds, before alcohol, I had to kill time somehow and that somehow was with board games. You can tell a lot about how an adolescent will turn out from which boardgames they become obsessed with. My friends who loved Hungry, Hungry Hippos all grew up to be morbidly obese. The ones who were into Monopoly ironically now all work on Wall Street. And my one friend who loved Guess Who became a police officer reprimanded for racial profiling. But this is the first new board game I've been excited about in decades.

It looks like later this year, Warner Brothers will be releasing a board game version of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The game will let players reenact the quest of Bilbo Baggins and Co., but only...you know...in board game form, which is nowhere near as exhilarating or exciting.

Actually, now that I think about it, board games are kind of incredibly boring. Especially when I can't cheat by secretly stacking the deck of Trivial Pursuit cards. But the only thing more boring than a normal board game, is one based on a big action-packed movie. How are you going to match the energy of taking out the Death Star when you have to roll a die to see if you've landed at Endor, or if you've been eaten by a womprat?

So hopefully The Hobbit will find a way to retain the attention span of children raised on Japanese anime cartoons that give you seizures and video games where you can bludgeon some 13-year-old Bangladeshi kid's avatar to death online with a nuke-powered assault rifle.

Check out the gallery for some of the worst Movie-to-Board Game adaptations.