What Game Tables are Best for your Family?

As our family grew bigger and older, and we moved into a bigger house, we knew that we wanted something that would help our family enjoy fun times together as well as make our home a place where our kids would like to hang out with their friends, especially as they got older and became teenagers. There were a few requirements: it could be used year round, could provide different levels of entertainment and adapted for various abilities and would be suitable for all age groups. After a bit of research and considering the space available, we decided on a couple of game tables.

A little bit more research made us realize that game tables was the easy part of the decision, deciding what kind of game tables was going to be harder. We knew that we had room for two game tables, so that at least gave us a bit more leeway. Though with six people in our family, there was a lot of discussion and many differing opinions.

Some of the different game tables available include: air hockey, foosball, pool tables, table tennis, bumper pool, shuffleboard, dome hockey and poker tables. Growing up we had an air hockey table and that was a lot of fun. But I also really enjoyed playing pool. My husband and sons really liked the idea of a foosball table.  The girls main vote was for ping pong. We had crossed the poker table off the list, we were not eager for our children to learn the ins and outs of gambling. So how were we to decide? One option was to consider an All-in-1 Game table.

All-in-1 game tables can solve many problems in some households, plus provide a large variety of entertainment. Some of these All-in-1 tables had three games, others five games and some as many as 11 games. There is a lot of ingenuity that goes into these table today.  Some of these tables are labeled Pockey tables, and  as you can guess, they have air hockey on one side and then the table top flips over to a pool table. Depending on how many games the table offers, there are a variety of accessories, sometime including a separate top for table tennis or other games. Though when there are a lot of games included, many of them are regular board games like backgammon and checkers. The boards are often right on the table top. 

Back to our family decision. We really wanted game tables that allowed for more than two players so more of the family could be involved at one time (actually participating, not just watching or playing in tournament mode). With much consideration, we settled on foosball and table tennis. With foosball, we could play pairs for up to four players at a time. With table tennis, we could do the same playing doubles or with larger parties we could play Around the World which allowed an unlimited number of players (within reason of course).