Dalton City by Denis Ralet

It seems that I’m always being asked by my friends and associates how a native of Brussels, Belgium came to invent an American Wild West board game. I thought that you might ask also. So here’s the story.

My professional life – for the most part - has revolved around creating magazines dealing with media/advertising, nature and environment, tourism. Along the way, I also started a graphic pre-press studio called Studio Press, and I currently own a “business center” where we rent small offices. While I often have ideas like many other game inventors only some of them such as Dalton City were ever realized.

Just as there as there is American interest in Medieval Castles of Europe and The Knights of the Round Table, the tales of the American West of the 1800’s fascinate Europeans. So, I visited Monument Valley in 1977 and again in 1997 with my four children. We also toured Bodie, the ghost town in California (What a wonderful vacation for all of us!). After my first visit, I had the idea of blending some of the concepts of board games that the family played over the years with the spectacular scenery of Monument Valley (the scene on the box cover of Dalton City) and the tales of the Wild West. This became the board game, “Dalton City”.

The effort actually started in 1994 and it became a family project. My son, Geoffrey helped with the design and assisted me in entering components of Dalton City into the computer. My other children - Derek, Edouard and Emily - along with my wife Catherine provided great suggestions. While the original concept of the game and the bulk of the rules did not take a long time to assemble, the layout of the board in the figure-8 became a real challenge.

Once completed, we attempted to introduce the game in 1998 but it really wasn’t until 1999 that my friend and partner, Jacky Nevens, and I had a professionally presentable prototype and we received our first orders. We created our company, Telar Games (my last name, Ralet, reversed) to produce the game.  Significantly within the next year, we won “Toy Award 1999/2000.”

In May 2002, we embarked upon introducing a new version of Dalton City in the U.S.A. and, uniquely, added a booklet, which included a History of the Wild West as well as some biographical sketches of the Game piece characters. The Dalton City game that you have today is truly and uniquely an American version of a Wild West board game that was developed and originally released to a European audience.

My family, my partner Jacky Nevens and I hope our game brings you and your family and friends hours of enjoyment.

Denis Ralet

Inventor