I saw what you did over the weekend. You blew the dust off that old Clue board-game box and kicked off a "stay at home" night of playful sleuthing.

Want more evidence? Does "Professor Plum in the library with the candlestick" ring a bell?

You're not alone. This recession is bringing out the old-school gamers in a lot of us. A Fortune article last week claims that board-game sales soared by 23.5% to $808 million last year -- including the old favorites, as well as new ones, such as Blokus.

This is obviously great news for all board-game makers, including Mattel (NYSE:MAT) and Hasbro (NYSE:HAS). The companies have been falling out of favor in recent years to more rapidly growing video-game publishers, such as Guitar Hero mastermind Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ:ATVI).

Compare the value of a $60 video game, which even a diehard gamer may tire of in a few weeks, to a $15 board game that will still be fun several years later. The choice becomes a recessionary no-brainer.

GameStop (NYSE:GME) was posting healthy positive comps before stumbling during its latest quarter. And things are going to get worse before they get better for the video-game retailer. GameStop sees comps for the current quarter falling by 8% to 11%. Some developers, including Take-Two Interactive (NASDAQ:TTWO), are falling even harder.

There's probably another factor at play behind the resurgence of classic board games. Facebook is now the country's most popular site after Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) in terms of overall time spent, according to Nielsen NetView. One of the most popular applications when Facebook opened up its apps platform two years ago was a virtual Scrabble knockoff. Set aside for a moment the legal jousting that ensued. My point is only that even social-networking hipsters rallied around the classic word game.

So where do we go from here? Will board games go back into the closet once discretionary income starts trickling in? Don't be so sure. There are several video games based on board games, and there are also popular downloads through console-specific marketplaces, such as Microsoft's (NASDAQ:MSFT) Xbox Live.

The gamers may change. The mediums of delivery will change. Deep down, though, we're just all throwback gamers at heart.