Twister

Spin the spinner, put your hand on blue and your foot on red, and try not to fall over. The players were the game pieces.

Four rows of colors - red, blue, yellow, green. Left foot, right foot, left hand, right hand. Spin the spinner, get your instructions - left hand on blue, right foot on red. That sounds easy enough, until somebody else needs to put a foot where your hand already is, or you need to get your right foot crossed over to your left side to reach the red spot.

Twister used the players themselves as the pieces. Just spread out the mat, spin the spinner, and put the selected hand or foot on the indicated color. Keep your position while everyone else takes a turn, and try not to fall. Watching somebody work out where to put their next foot could be as entertaining as playing.

Milton Bradley released Twister in 1966. Reyn Guyer helped originate the idea, with Charles Foley and Neil Rabens developing the final game. The game got some very useful publicity when Johnny Carson played it with Eva Gabor on The Tonight Show - a demonstration of how to play went a lot further in explaining the game than just trying to explain it.

The original Twister game is still pretty much as you remember it - a vinyl mat with rows of colored dots, and a spinner with hand/foot and color designations. The only noteworthy variation is the Twister Ultimate game, which keeps the same basic game play and spinner, but the mat is twice as large and has double the number of spots, which allows more people to play at once.