Rush Hour

Rush Hour defies categorization.

For a long time I wasn't sure whether to post this to my board game blog or here, because while it does fulfill the main requirement of a board game - IE it takes place on a board of sorts - it isn't multiplayer, so it's hard to figure out where it goes. Ultimately, it's a puzzle, which means it's a toy, which is how we wound up where we are right now. See. This isn't all just done willy nilly, I have a system with rules in place. They don't make much sense, but they're there, and that's what matters

I can remember playing Rush Hour at my step grandparents house. It was likely one of the first things that really got me into puzzle games of any kind, and so for that I suppose I owe it a somewhat debt of gratitude, even if it is gratuitously difficult and makes you have worse road rage than when you're actually on the road. Originally created by Nob Yoshigahara and released in 1996, manufactured by Think Fun (formerly Binary Arts), Rush Hour is nothing more than a sliding block puzzle, something I'm sure most of us have run into in one form or another whether in other toys, video games or something else entirely. It's not a totally unique type of puzzle, but it is a totally unique type of toy based on the puzzle.

The regular edition comes with 40 puzzles, which is certainly some bang for your buck, considering what this actually is. It's all very simplistic; cars stuck in a traffic jam that you need to maneuver around just so in order to form the right order. All plastic, all basic primary colors, all exceedingly plain for all intents and purposes. But one of the more fascinating things about Rush Hour is it's one of the first toys I've ever seen to have what's known in card realms as "Expansion Packs". There's 3 of these official expansion packs, one of which comes with a red sports car that takes up 2 squares, another which comes with a white limo that takes up 3 squares and the final which comes with a taxi that takes up 2 squares. Each expansion also provides you with 40 new exclusive challenges, which is pretty dang neat if I'm being honest. Not only do you get new puzzle pieces, but also new ways to play with said puzzle pieces. I find the idea of Expansion Packs, or what's known as DLC for video games, for toys extremely interesting and I'm surprised I don't see it more often. Now perhaps I don't see it more often because most toys don't lend themselves to such a concept. Really, I'd think, that sort of idea would best be suited for board games, which once again only muddles the question of which field this thing really belongs in: toy or board game. I'm sticking with toy, for the sake of simplicity.

The goal of Rush Hour is, as I said, extremely simple: get only the red car out through the exit of the board by moving the other vehicles out of its way. But actually accomplishing this goal? Pretty god damn hard, if I recall correctly. This thing will take you hours, and that's without all the complicated extra hard puzzles they give you.

I can remember sitting on the living room floor of my step grandparents house playing with this thing for hours at a time, just absolutely befuddled at how to actually accomplish what sounded like such an easily attainable goal. All you have to do is get the red car to the end? How fucking difficult could that really be? Well, as it turns out, pretty fucking difficult. Those trucks and vans and other cars really make it harder than you'd think, and this isn't helped by the fact that the board is so exceedingly tiny and tight that it makes it even harder to correctly maneuver things in just such a way that nets you success, or anything even relatively near success.

The board is a 6x6 grid with grooves in the tiles to allow cars to slide, and a card tray to hold the cards. There are 16 vehicles - 12 cars and 4 trucks, not counting the expansion packs - each colored differently. Cars and trucks are both one square wide, but cars are two squares long, and trucks are three squares long, and vehicles can only be moved along a straight line on the grid as rotation is strictly forbidden. Not only this, but not all the cars or trucks are utilized in all the various challenges on the different challenge cards. So yeah, Rush Hour? Kind of a bitch, honestly. But that's what makes it so unique. I played this thing back in elementary school and I still recall it with ease today, that's how memorable it is. I still hesitate to call this a toy, just because of the board element, but there's no going back now, so.

Rush Hour is a totally unique toy, especially because we often don't get puzzles in 3d models. Puzzles are often what you think of when you hear the word "puzzle". They're something you do with your grandma at 8pm on a Thursday during the summer at her kitchen table. They've got pastel paintings on them, often of landscapes or animals, and are rarely something as interesting as this. Now, since I'm a loser who spends all her time alone, I do regular puzzles quite often, but even I can't deny the fact that Rush Hour is just more fun to work with. It's visually different, and it's like a 3D printed toy before 3D printers were really a thing. 

When I was a little girl, I visited a very small old town on a family vacation one summer, and while there we visited a train museum, because I love trains because, you guessed it, I'm a huge fucking loser. In the gift shop were these small boxes with puzzles in them. You only got about 10 pieces or so to work with, and one each side of the square was either the beginning or the ending of another train car, and you had to match them up with the right part of the same train car on another square. It was tough. I still play this to this day, and it's still tough. But it's about as close as one can come to a standard puzzle version of Rush Hour, because in essence, it's sort of the same thing: vehicles needing to be put in the right place.

They still sell Rush Hour today, hell you can probably find it at your local Walmart, and I totally recommend giving it a shot. It's colorful, it's brain teasing and it makes you feel like a goddamned genius when you finally figure the puzzle out. Then watch someone else do it and laugh at them while they struggle like a monkey with a stick, because what good are puzzle toys if not to be used to make ourselves feel intellectually superior to those around us?

And if you don't want to get Rush Hour, you can always go to New York and get stuck in an actual traffic jam. I guarantee you the irritant is exactly the same.