What is this, Mario Party?
Board Games are typically something that friends can play around a table. Some are even small enough to play them in the back of a moving car.
Not these board games, though.
Sometimes the "board" is bigger than the table, and the pieces will take both hands to move — or even a full-body shove. Forget travel-sized, you'll probably have to travel around just to get from one end of the game to the other.
This might occur because the game was made for giants, or conversely for small children without fine motor control. Perhaps it's designed to be visible to onlookers a long way up, or it might even be that the "pieces" are full-sized people and the board is larger to match.
Not to be confused with The Big Board, where the board is being used for planning, rather than for the actual game. This trope is also not about sports where a field-sized playing area is to be expected. It's about games that would normally just sit in front of you but have been sized up. See also Cosmic Chess Game, where higher beings treat the whole world as their "board".
Human Chess is almost always a Sub-Trope, with living people being used as pieces for chess (including variants like Chinese chess), and examples of it should generally go on that page. A fixture of the Party Game genre of video games (using the more specific definition of "Mario Party clone").
Examples:
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Anime & Manga
- Anne Happy: Episode 3 involves Class 7, a group of terminally unlucky students, being brought to a secret underground base 400 meters below their school to take part in a massive obstacle course themed around a board game. Their alternative is to play Russian roulette.
- In Pretty Cure All-Stars DX 3, the warm-colored Cures (Shiny Luminous, Cure Rouge, Cure Lemonade, Milky Rose, Cure Pine, Cure Passion, Cure Sunshine and Cure Moonlight) are sent to a strange board game-like world where they must throw a large dice bigger than they are to move and are then forced to participate in weird mini-games.
Asian Animation
- Flower Angel: During the Otherspace story arc in Season 2, Shuxin is pitted against a fairy in a giant version of chess where the pieces have magic sentient representatives (making it similar to, but not quite like human chess). Not being able to finish the game in time carries the threat of Shuxin being turned into stone, which slowly happens as she plays.
Comic Books
- Cerebus the Aardvark: In Flight, Cerebus and Suenteus Po engage in a kind of trippy astral experience depicted as a gigantic game of chess. Cerebus is standing on the board and the pieces are each at least twice his height, and Po appears as a titanic figure in the distance who is large enough to reach down and move the pieces as a person would move pieces on a normal-sized game of chess. Po reveals a piece of his past with each of his moves, and each of Cerebus' moves are compared to a character in the story and how being around Cerebus affected them. The symbolism of this extends past the actual "game", as Suenteus Po realizes that he made a mistake in the game, revealed by Sim to be Cerebus' "magnifier" at work.
- Superman: In one Golden Age story, Superman is tired of Mr. Mxyzptlk constantly tormenting him, so he suggests that the imp take up a less disruptive hobby, like chess. Mxy actually agrees, but then begins stealing buildings and monuments from all over the world to use as pieces, with the continental United States itself as the board. Superman has to move the pieces across the country and beat Mxy at his own game before he'll leave, and then he returns everything to its rightful place.
Fan Works
- Being Meiling: In the third thread, Flandre Scarlet gets the idea of recreating the board game of Risk at a larger size, bringing that idea to life with the help of Sakuya's space-warping ability and with various fairy servants standing in as the game pieces. Further into the story, she does the same with Catan and Battleship for other celebratory events.
Films — Animation
- The Boss Baby: One of the steps in the Big Bad’s Death Trap involves a giant version of Mouse Trap. Tim and Boss Baby are too fascinated by watching it to avoid getting caught.
Films — Live-Action
- Jumanji: The titular board game can suck players into its dangerous, life-size jungle game board, as well as cause life-size animals and other game elements to appear in the real world.
Literature
- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland: The world Alice finds in Through the Looking-Glass has a chess motif. Alice sees a valley laid out like a giant chess board, with the squares divided by hedges and brooks. Alice herself plays the part of a pawn, moving ever forward across the board, with the goal of becoming a queen by reaching the far side.
- Beware of Chicken mentions that since Chunky the boar doesn't have the dexterity to use regular-sized Go pieces, Jin has made him a much larger board using river stones.
- The Big Joke Game is about a Class Clown (who's about to be sent to military school because he's that out of hand) ending up in Limbo and meeting his "Guardian Devil"; he goes through the titular game as a test (and development) of character.
- The chess set in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is a mixture of Human Chess and just really big stone pieces. They're full-sized statues that respond to voice commands and actually fight each other when capturing.
- A life-size game of Martian Chess is played in the fifth John Carter of Mars novel, The Chessmen of Mars.
- Jumanji: When playing the titular board game, dangerous animals from the game appear life-size in the real world and cause havoc.
Live-Action TV
- Goosebumps (1995): The deadly board game in the episode "The Haunted House Game" encompasses the titular house itself in its entirety. The first stage is a giant board game where the players themselves are the game pieces and are given a pile of suitably oversized dice to choose from. However, they choose the smallest set of dice so it will actually fit inside their pocket.
- Incredible Games: The "Dark Knight's Lair" game requires the players to make their way across a giant chessboard, without being caught by the Dark Knight. On each turn, the three players have to move alternately forwards or sideways, while the Dark Knight approaches from the other end of the board. The Dark Knight cannot see where they are, but can see white lights which show where they were on the previous move.
- Odd Squad: In "Swamps 'n Gators", Bradley invents a machine that teleports people into board games. When he uses it on Olive and Otto for the eponymous game and makes them the game pieces, the board becomes gigantic from their perspective, and they are magically forced to move around it via die rolls and cards in order to get out.
- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: In "Move Along Home", the Wadi take revenge on Quark for cheating them by forcing him to play a new board game. The aliens use their powers to transport Sisko, Kira, Dax, and Bashir into the game as game pieces. The four of them find themselves in a giant version of the game.
Music
- The music video for "California Gurls" by Katy Perry follows Katy as she explores a life-size board game called "Candyfornia", a raunchy parody of Candy Land.
- The music video for the Blur song "Country House" is set on a giant, Mouse Trap-like game called Escape from the Rat Race, where the band hangs out before it descends into chaos by the song’s end.
- Culture Club's music video for "It's a Miracle" has the members of the band moving around a circular board representing their career up to that point, landing on spaces such as "GO TO THE TOP OF THE CHARTS" and one marked with the single artwork for "Karma Chameleon", all mixed in with Monopoly spaces such as GO and CHANCE.
Tabletop Games
- Numenera: One of the otherworldly locales described in Into the Night is the Thon Iridescence, a vast simulated world created by a long-gone alien civilization that consists of countless interconnected pocket worlds, many of which are ruled over by singular beings with godlike power over their contents. One such is the Game of Perithog, an enormous three-dimensional game board where visitors are made to participate in complex and deadly games against Perithog the Grandmaster, with freedom and great prizes if they beat him and death if they lose.
Video Games
- Afterlife (1996) includes a Bad Thing (natural disaster) where a giant hand plays craps with heaven, throwing a pair of dice that bounce across the landscape destroying buildings.
- The Angry Video Game Nerd II: ASSimilation has an entire world based on Board James, so it naturally consists of giant board game parts.
- Banjo-Kazooie:
- One of the pyramids within Gobi's Valley has an inner floor that functions like a gigantic memory match board whose flippable tiles stand in for the shuffled card pairs. Banjo and Kazooie have to Ground Pound the tiles in the hopes that the revealed drawings match (if they don't, they'll flip back again). They have to find all pairs under the given time limit to earn a Jiggy.
- Mad Monster Mansion features a small wooden house which contains a giant Ouija table in its interior. Banjo and Kazooie have to hop onto a large crystal glass and move around with it to spell the name BANJO-KAZOOIE with the letters written in the borders without being touched by the purple Tee Hee that travels across the borders or stepping onto the Gruntilda tiles (as both things inflict damage to them). Also, they must write the name within a time limit. Succeeding will yield a Jiggy.
- One of the last sections of the game is "Grunty's Furnace Fun", a gigantic board game that serves as a variant on a Final-Exam Boss. Banjo and Kazooie are the "piece" that has to move across the board by answering questions and completing various challenges from earlier in the game (only now with a stricter time limit). The prize is Tooty, Banjo's little sister who serve as the game's Damsel in Distress.
- Devil May Cry 4: Missions 6 and 19 feature a puzzle in which the player must strike a giant dice to move a life-size statue of themselves across a board. Depending on which space the statue lands on, the game will either spawn enemies, provide helpful items, or allow progression to the next level.
- Gunstar Heroes: Black's Base is designed as a board game, with each space the player's piece lands on acting as a teleporter to a different challenge room, and the boss being located at the end goal. The board itself takes up the stage's entire background, and progression is made by throwing a human-sized dice.
- Honkai: Star Rail: As part of its 1st anniversary, the event minigame "Cosmodyssey" is a virtual Monopoly-like board game where the main character physically walks on the squares and throws dice as big as their body.
- This is the basis of Mario Party and its many imitators, with the characters as their own pieces, and the "worlds" they play on as large board games.
- In the "Waterloo World" episode of Psychonauts, Raz shrinks down onto the strategy board game that Fred and his ancestor Napoleon are playing. He becomes a literal pawn on a massive board, who must help Fred win the game by changing his luck and fighting the enemy game pieces.
- Reksio and the Wizards: Piklibia is a land of Tabletop RPG, as it is made from board game parts. Enough to say Wizard ruling this land is named Spielmauster.
- Rugrats Scavenger Hunt has the babies imagine that they're traveling through a giant game board.
- Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation has The Senet Game, which is a board game with giant pieces. Lara has to spin sticks to act as a die, then stand on a coloured square to make the pieces move.
- Ultima VII: Knight's Bridge court is a fictional board game, consisting of three pieces per side and a treasure in the middle, where pieces may move or push a piece. The objective is to push the treasure to one's home row. It may be found south of Empath abbey, being played with statues and a large chest.
Web Animation
- Strawberry Shortcake: Berry in the Big City: In "The Berryville Trail", Strawberry creates a giant board game for a sleepover with her friends that takes up the entire living room/kitchen of her apartment. The game has her friends traverse "The Berryville Trail" to reach the Cornbread Cottage, while buying supplies and navigating various hazards, not unlike a certain real-life game about travelling along a historical trail.
Web Videos
- MrBeast: In the video "Giant Monopoly Game With Real Money
", Jimmy flies in four contestants to play a game of Monopoly on a giant board. Ultimately, Logan wins the game and $10,400.
- Sidemen: In the video SIDEMEN MONOPOLY IN REAL LIFE and its sequel SIDEMEN MONOPOLY IN REAL LIFE 2, the Sidemen are split into 3 teams and play a giant version of Monopoly. Both videos are hosted by Simon and feature the same teams but with different names: Ethan and Josh in team Skrr Skrr/the Drivers, Harry and Vik in team Boats and Hoes/the Seamen and JJ and Tobi in team 3/the Workers.note
- SuperMarioLogan: In "Joseph the Millionaire!", Bowser Junior discovers that Joseph is secretly wealthy and lives in a mansion. Among the things Joseph has in it is a giant Operation game. Joseph tries to get the Wish Bone out, but touches the sides, causing Cavity Sam's nose to buzz. He then makes Chives, his butler, get the Frog in Throat out without touching the sides, threatening to punish him if he touches the sides. Chives manages to get the Frog in Throat out without touching the sides, but when he boasts about it to Joseph, Joseph touches the sides on purpose so he can punish Chives by putting him in a giant bowling ball and rolling him at giant bowling pins.
Western Animation
- Batman: The Animated Series: In "What Is Reality?", the Riddler traps Commissioner Gordon in a virtual reality simulation. To save him, Batman has to enter it as well, with obstacles like a giant chess game. The Commissioner himself is inside a giant Rubik's Cube that has to be solved to free him. Batman ends up tearing the cube apart instead.
- Ever After High: When the protagonists find themselves standing on a giant chessboard, they initially assume that they're playing Human Chess — but being Wonderland, it turns out that things are much more chaotic than that. Their own pawns turning around to talk to them counts as "having their turn", while their opponents just plow through the pieces, and Raven Queen's chosen "move" is to declare that the contest is now a Dance-Off (which the Red Knight is unprepared for, soon causing him to "fall" and letting them move on).
- Go, Dog. Go!: In "Board Silly", the entire town becomes a board game that Tag and Scooch play.
- Jellystone!: The episode "Jellystone! The Boardgame" has Mayor Huckleberry turning the town into a giant board game as a birthday present for the giant Grape Ape, with Yogi and Yakky acting as the pieces.
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Near the end of "Uncommon Bond", Starlight and Sunburst reaffirm their friendship by playing Dragon Pit, their favorite board game from their childhood — only now it's been scaled up large enough that they're able to stand in for their own game pieces.
- The Owl House: In the series' Grand Finale, The Collector forces Luz, King and Eda to play gigantic versions of Pac-Man, marbles, and Jenga with them, all while on a giant Rubik's Cube.
- In the Phineas and Ferb episode "Skiddley Whiffers", the title characters create a giant-sized version of Candace's favorite childhood game, Skiddley Whiffers.
- Rupert: In "Rupert and Bill in Gameland", Rupert and Bill enter a world of giant board games, the pieces of which are all fighting each other.
- The Simpsons: The "Treehouse of Horror XXI" segment "War and Pieces" is about Bart and Milhouse discovering an old board game called Satan's Path in the Simpson family attic. When they play it, it causes all the other board games in the attic to grow to massive size and cover Springfield. Lisa discovers that beating all the board games will cause them to win Satan's Path and turn all the other board games back to normal size.
- Xiaolin Showdown: Played with. The showdown in "Oil in the Family" is Jurassic Chess, where Raimundo and the Villain of the Week are placed in a giant grid and must move massive stone statues around in an attempt to checkmate their opponent's King. However, the game doesn't follow traditional chess rules, as a major strategy of both competitors is to try to crush their opponent with the statues, and Raimundo wins by moving several pieces at once while his enemy is distracted. As such, the grid acts much more as an arena with a unique gimmick than an actual board game.
Real Life
- Traces of giant pachisi boards can be found in India, at palaces and other places where the wealthy and powerful once lived. It's said that the game was played on such huge boards using harem slaves as the "pieces".
- The Strong National Museum of Play has a massive outdoor game board as one of its exhibits. It includes larger-than-life size replicas of game pieces from various iconic tabletop games, including Monopoly, Scrabble, Jenga, and even Dungeons & Dragons.
