As Gen Xers become more, um, advanced, we’re always looking for ways to relive our wild (yeah, right) youth. For most of us, that means harkening back to the 1980s, when we were young and free (or cheap, at least). But since we’re not young anymore, how do we recapture the magic without breaking our backs? Why, with these gnarly 80s party games for adults, of course!
Pin the Glove on Michael
Get a white glove, a poster of Michael Jackson, and a blindfold, and you’re ready to go! One player at a time stands in front of the poster and tries to pin the glove on Michael’s hand as close as possible.
Charades
The 80s party game that can be played with any 80s song! One player acts out a word or phrase to guess, while the rest of the players try to guess what it is. You can limit your subject to 80s topics, or you can play with any topics — the game itself is “80s” enough to carry the day.
Name That 80s Tune
One person picks 80+’s tune and then hums notes until someone guesses what it is. An alternative would be to give hints about the song until someone figures it out. There are lots of other permutations, too:
- Players “bid” against each other (“I can name that tune in two clues!”)
- Play in pairs, with one person humming, the other guessing
- Round-robin guessing, where on person hums and other take turns guessing
The 80s Game Show
This game requires a projector and 80’s trivia questions, but the fun of an 80s game show doesn’t require all that much! One at a time, players are asked three 80’s related trivia questions with increasing levels of difficulty, from easy to hard. The player must answer correctly in order to advance. If the player answers incorrectly, they are eliminated and another person takes their place. The 80s Game Show ends when there is one player left or all players have been eliminated.
Trivial Pursuit: Totally 80s Edition
This 80s edition of Trivial Pursuit requires knowledge in six categories: Entertainment, In the News, Personalities, Sports & Leisure, That’s Life, and Wild Card. As with other versions of the popular trivia game, players answer questions in these categories during their turn and collect corresponding colored “wedges” if they answer correctly in one of the hub spaces. First person to collect all six “slices of pie” to fill their game piece wins.
Mad Libs
Mad Libs is a word game where players fill in the blanks with synonyms, homophones, and related words. One player draws an adjective from the box to prompt the rest of the group for a noun or verb. A sentence maker (often called “spinner”) then uses this information to create phrases on his/her turn, which are read aloud by the player who drew the adjective.
Players take turns as sentence makers, and try to get each other in stitches with their hilarious or ridiculous responses. The first person unable to come up with a response loses.
Spin the Bottle
In the classic game, players sit in a circle and spin the bottle. When it stops spinning, whoever is facing that person has to kiss them. The game continues until someone doesn’t want to play anymore or at least when there are no more partners left.
A more tame adult version should skip the smooching and replace it with something more innocent — a handshake, a “how you doin’?”, a high five, a round of golf.
Atari 2600 Tournament
For this 80s party game, divide the guests into two teams and have one team member at a time face off against an opponent. The players take turns playing a video game of their choice, then switch to a different one when someone wins. Continue until someone wins three games or there are no more challengers left in either team.
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