Who remembers this ‘Clue’ VCR Mystery Game?

I love all things Clue (or Cluedo for you folks across the pond who gave us the orig­i­nal), the clas­sic mys­tery board game orig­i­nally pub­lished in 1949.

The 1972 edi­tion of Clue is the one I grew up with, which was pretty beat up by the time it was passed down to me, but I love its design that intro­duced real peo­ple pos­ing as Clue sus­pects. For me, this is the defin­i­tive ver­sion of clue. But there is one other ver­sion of Clue that holds a spe­cial place in my heart: Clue the VCR Mys­tery Game pub­lished in 1985.

My grand­mother had a copy of this game at her house and I used to watch the accom­pa­ny­ing VHS–which is a spec­tac­u­lar crapfest of bad cos­tumes and acting!–that was meant to be viewed while you play the game, pay­ing close atten­tion to on-screen clues in order to cor­rectly match your cards. It’s dras­ti­cally dif­fer­ent from the clas­sic Clue board game.

Unfor­tu­nately, a game like this doesn’t have much replay value, as once you’ve watched the video you’ll know all there is to know. How­ever, this edi­tion of Clue was unique in that it intro­duced four addi­tional char­ac­ters to the orig­i­nal sus­pects: M. Brunette, Madam Rose, Sgt. Gray, and Miss Peach.

I have no idea what­ever hap­pened to my grandmother’s copy of this game, but it’s some­thing I wish she had held onto. My sis­ter and cousins and I used to keep our­selves enter­tained at Grandma’s house by stag­ing elab­o­rate Clue-themed scav­enger hunts where we’d each take on the role of one of the sus­pects and act out scenes from this video. Yeah, we were weird kids.

Watch the VHS!

I went hunt­ing for this video online recently and was delighted when I found that some­one had uploaded the entire thing to YouTube. The inter­net is amaz­ing like that for recov­er­ing lost relics from your child­hood. So thanks Astuo , who­ever you are, for doing that!

Here’s the whole thing in 7 parts:

Do you like Clue?

Over the decades Clue has spawned dozens of dif­fer­ent edi­tions, puz­zles, video games, books, a movie, a musi­cal, and count­less other spin-offs and tie-ins. If you’re ever inter­ested in know­ing just how deep the well of Clue-related col­lectibles is, look no fur­ther than  The Art of Mys­tery , a well-organized web­site show­cas­ing one man’s per­sonal Clue col­lec­tion rep­re­sent­ing over 15 years worth of mur­der and mystery.

More stuff and things!