Games I Grew Up On: Fireball Island

I mentioned this game briefly once before as one of the games that taught me how intricate and cool board games can be.  Fireball Island is like a much more complex Mouse Trap...well...much more complex gameplay-wise, not so much with the intricate device that needs to be set up.  The goal of the game is simple, get the jewel from the top of the island and get back to the boat to escape.  Unfortunately, as the name suggests, this island has some fireballs on it.  Namely, there are five different locations that fireballs may roll down a set path.  If a fireball hits a player or another player piece hits your player piece, you must spend a turn getting up from the nearest smoldering pit.  So basically, once you get the jewel, everyone will be chucking fireballs your way.

The fireballs each have their own path to roll down, with the exception of the one in the awesome Tiki head, Vul-Kar who rotates and may drop his fireball down one of many different paths.  There are a few safe spaces on the board where no fireball can hit you.  There are also caves you can try to use (with a lucky roll of the die) to shortcut around the board.  You also get action cards to try to make things easier.  These cards will either let you roll a fireball, take another turn, give a player trying to steal the jewel a fake jewel (so you keep the real one and they keep going), counter someone else's card, or help mitigate the luck of the die roll for your next turn.  The game is definitely heavy on luck helping you to win, but there's (I think) just enough strategy to keep things interesting.  Plus, it's way fun to try to roll fireballs into each other and the few times you knock one player into another is just awesome.

Now that I actually have a better understanding of how much games cost to buy and produce, I'm curious how expensive the game was (the whole island is a custom plastic mold and Vul-Kar is pretty darn intricate).    I would also love to know where our copy went or if it got lost during a move or something...