Before the advent of video games, smartphones, and tablets, boys and girls used to play outside with their friends. Children didn’t need fancy and expensive gadgets to have fun. For most games, all you needed were a few friends – if you did need some equipment, it was mostly things found outside, around the house, or were relatively inexpensive (if you needed to purchase them).
From the basics, like habulan, patintero, or tumbang preso, there’s a lot of traditional games Filipino children from around the country play. Nowadays, it seems like only the titos and titas are the only ones who remember these classic games and how to play them.
This is a series I’d like to call Games Children No Longer Play. Join me in this trip down memory lane, where we talk about the different Filipino games that are near and dear to my heart, with rules on how we used to play them in our part of the Philippines.
I have also used Google AI to generate the pictures for these articles.
Everybody has played hide and seek at one point in their lives, but not all can say that they have played birus, the extreme cousin of that very common childhood game. Birus is a game that requires sleuth, speed, and endurance to win.
For reasons unknown, Birus is usually played during a full moon, although it is also perfectly fun to play in the afternoon. One reason may be that it is easier to hide when it is dark.
Unlike hide and seek, where there is only one “it,” in Birus, there are several “its,” since it is a team game.
The rules are almost the same as that of Hide and Seek, where the “it” closes his or her eyes while the other players hide. The difference is, in Birus, teams will not just look for their opponents, but they have to run after them and tag them. After they have tagged that person, they have to run back to the base and shout “(name of person) birus save.” Only after everybody gets found and tagged will the opponent have their turn to hide.
Also, unlike hide and seek, where the game can end in a short time, in Birus, the game tends to last for several minutes, some even an hour. While it is relatively easy to find those who are hiding, the chase can take quite some time, especially if it is played in a wide field or if the teams are quite big.
The length of time that the game has to be played is one of the reasons why it is not a game kids often play. It is tons of fun, though.
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For the bona fide titos and titas out there – did you play this game in your youth? Maybe it was called something else, with a whole set of different rules? Let us know in the comments below, and let’s talk about it!