Most games are bad, but there are plenty of good old games. Tic-tac-toe, soccer, chess, go, nine men's morris, fanorona, alquerque, checkers, truco, canasta, gin rummy, pool, the numerous variations of mancala (wari, kalah, and dozens of others), shogi, gomoku ("Pente"), reversi ("Othello"), chinese checkers, and on and on.

So I think your statement, "It's only really in the late 80's early 90's stuff really developed in the board game world," really misses the mark. It's true that the US had a deeply impoverished board-game culture for decades, especially with regard to kids' boardgames. And it's true that we're in the middle of an unprecedented explosion of excellent boardgames. But there were already a number of excellent boardgames in existence.