King Kangaroo

Not quite Chinese Checkers: "It may interest readers to know that this game originated when the Inventor was faced with entertaining the Allied Forces during the last war so that they could, at least for an hour or two, be drawn away from thoughts of their normal surroundings. Having in a measure achieved his objective he set himself the task of making the game public, for the first time, in early December 1948, when King Kangaroo appeared for sale in the leading London Departmental Stores, such as Selfridges, Hamleys, Army & Navy Stores, DH Evans, Bentalls, etc. King Kangaroo is therefore an entirely NEW GAME of which the Inventor holds the Patent and manufacturing rights as also the Copyrights of the rules for the United Kingdom and World Patents are pending." The differences from the standard game are that the pieces cannot move at all without jumping, and can jump any number of adjacent pieces. There is also a single "King Kangaroo" piece per player, which functions slightly differently. [Edit by Derek Carve: Not "brazen" as [originally] implied above [point taken]. It is certainly played on a Chinese Checkers board but, come to that, many totally original games are played on a draughts board (Lines of Action is a good example) without being a re-packaging of draughts. In this truly excellent game, as correctly explained, the pieces move totally differently from Chinese Checkers BUT one piece on each side - the King - has to be different from the rest in some way. This is why it cannot be played with a standard set of Chinese Checkers unless, of course, one is prepared to paint some of the pieces.]