The Campaign For North Africa is a mercilessly tedious 1979 wargame, so complicated and abstruse it would take 20 years to get through a single game if given only 90 minutes a week to play. Its technicality and completeness are excessive—among the things players must grind through are fuel evaporation and the morale effects of Italy's pasta rations being properly boiled. It is the high point of pre-computing gaming nerdliness, the focus of a rare good joke in The Big Bang Theory. Luke Winkie, for Kotaku:
It was a joke, by the way. Richard Berg, the legendary game designer and author of The Campaign For North Africa, says so himself. He'll happily admit that this was an unreasonable game for unreasonable people, but still, a pasta point? There's attention to detail, and then there's taking the piss. As Berg explains, the rule wasn't even entirely factually accurate. "The reality is that the Italians cooked their pasta with the tomato sauce that came with the cans," he says. "But I didn't want to do a rule on that." Yes, at the pinnacle of North Africa's ridiculous excess, even Berg couldn't help but poke a little fun at the obsessives in his wake.
The Notorious Board Game That Takes 1,500 Hours To Complete [Kotaku]
