Four in a Row, more commonly known as Hasbro MB Games 'Connect 4' or Captain's Mistress is a ubiquitous but straightforward strategy game in which counters are dropped down vertical shoots with the objective of getting four counters in a row horizontally, vertically or diagonally.

Stacking Four in a Row Games - Connect 4™ and The Captain's Mistress

It is not clear exactly when the first stacking Four in a Row game appeared.

This is Robbie Bell's Four Balls game which he dated to the early 20th century.

The earliest claimed ancestry is a legend surrounding early explorer Captain Cook. It is stated that Captain Cook spent so much time stuck in his cabin playing the game against his fellow travellers naturalist Joseph Banks and botanist Daniel Solander on his voyages that it become known as the Captain's Mistress. The author has spent some time investigating the veracity of this but has found no evidence that it's true.

In a book by Robbie Bell, there is a picture of a 4 in a row game that he calls "Four Balls". It is a wooden game of reasonable quality made from Mahogany with beech balls for pieces that dropped into wooden chutes. Bell says that the date of the game is uncertain but he estimates that it is Edwardian c. 1901 - 1910. On the bottom of the game in gold lettering is inscribed "Remy Martin Cognac". The author has located an advertisement from the 1970s for the Remy Martin Cognac board and while he is loathe to disagree with R. C. Bell, who was a great games historian, in this instance it seems quite unlikely that the game does date from the early 20th century and more likely that it arrived on the scene a few years after Connect 4 first appeared... So whether the story was totally fictional; just a sales-led invention or if perhaps there is a grain of truth in it remains to be seen - please email if you come across any evidence either way...

A Travel Captain's Mistress game by Nauticalia that sold until 2010.

More certain is that Milton Bradley (now Hasbro) started selling their massively successful version of the game called Connect 4 in February 1974 (1976 in Britain).

Could this therefore be an example of a game that was actually genuinely invented by a large games corporate? The pattern usually is that corporates claim they invented a game for years only for it to be discovered some time later that they either ripped off another game or bought out the inventor. Jenga and Monopoly are great examples of this but there are hundreds of others. In fact, it's almost a rule that corporates never invent anything original; they simply stitch up game designers. But perhaps this might be an exception to the rule...

A giant version of Four in a Row called Mega 4 in a Line.

Apart from Hasbro's Connect 4, many modern games manufacturers make a version of Four in A Row from small cheap plastic travel versions to larger nicer looking versions in wood.

A trend from around the turn of the century has been the production of Giant versions of the game for parties - the UK company Garden Games market a version called 'Up For It' (previously branded Giant Connect 4 before they lost the Hasbro Licence). A longer running competing product from Spanish company Feber is called Mega 4 in a Line - another brightly coloured robust Giant version of Four in a Row that can be seen all over the place in garden centres and play areas etc. There are also wooden Giant versions that look rather more sophisticated.