Inducted 2025
Battleship’s roots go back to the earliest manufactured war games. In 1890, the E. I. Horsman Company copyrighted its board game Basilinda, in which opponents arrange wooden pegs representing their army on either side of a cardboard screen. When the screen is removed, any soldier opposite an opponent’s cannon is taken off the board. During World War I, Russian officers reportedly played a similar game on a hand-drawn paper grid. In that game, players secretly plot the locations of their battalions or their ships and then must guess the position of opponents’ pieces by dropping bombs or firing shots. Starex Novelty Company’s 1931 game Salvo included printed grids to let players more easily plot ship locations. Milton Bradley manufactured a pencil and paper version in 1943 known as Broadsides: The Game of Naval Strategy, before publishing Battleship in 1967.
Battleship plays almost the same as the earlier pencil and paper games, except it uses plastic pegs and ships. A clever fold-up lid serves as the grid on which a player fires and marks shots while simultaneously blocking the view of the opponent’s ship positions. Milton Bradley advertised Battleship during the Saturday morning cartoon lineup that dominated many children’s television viewing in the late 1960s, as well as during prime-time programming. The original box design reflected the stereotypical gender roles of the day, depicting a father and son playing the game while a mother and daughter observe from the background as they happily wash and dry the dishes.
Since its debut more than 50 years ago, Milton Bradley’s Battleship game has sold more than 100 million copies. These include updated electronic “talking” versions and versions including additional rules to make the game more strategic. Some versions recall 1931’s Salvo, in which players could fire multiple shots at a time depending on how many of their own ships they had remaining. 2023’s Battleship Royale expands the game into a six-player shoot-out. Some releases change the game’s setting. One version takes place in the Pirates of the Caribbean universe, while others adopt the stylings of the Star Wars series.
Battleship also translates well to the computer, since the number of possible combinations for arranging a player’s ships is finite and grid based. Computerized in the 1970s, Battleship received video game adaptations on both personal computers and home consoles. In 2012, Universal Pictures and Hasbro collaborated on a movie called Battleship. While the film was only very loosely based on the game, its existence is an indicator of the game’s popularity.