Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

As a GenX, I grew up with Battleship and Electronic Battleship (cooler). Its a great game for young kids. 5 or 6 is about as young as you want to go on age. The kids have to learn both grid notation and also the transformation that their attack grid is an analog to my defense grip/ship grid and vice versa. It takes kids a little while to grasp this concept fully. The game is suspenseful and fun for kids. The drawback with this version of Battleship is pretty common to a lot of products. The manufacturer has done a lot of cost reduction to the game since you saw the version you played on as a kid. There is a lightweight and cheap feel to it now. One example is the white/red pegs. They used to be large, about 2cm and solid. Now they are about 1/2 cm and hollow to save on plastic cost. Just one example, but you get the idea, everything about it has been spared down to the minimal possible costs. They even have the user apply the outside Battleship decal stickers to save on a few pennies of assembly cost. This sort of makes sense. They are selling the game based on nostalgia we all have for it that we want to pass on to our kids. This games sales driver is not word of mouth on high build quality or durability. Therefore, charge as much as possible and cut costs at every conceivable location. To this I would say to the manufacturer, shame on you guys. A better bet would be to find an older battleship game with better quality on eBay or go dig up your old set from your parents basement. Those sets were built so well that they should still be fine.