[hahamrfunnyguy]

A number of years ago I was at a friend's house and he wanted to play Uno but he couldn't be cause his dog got into the deck and many of the cards were damaged.

I noticed he had a couple of packs of playing cards on his coffee table and upon closer inspection, I realized that each card in Uno maps to a card in 52 card deck. A standard Uno deck has 108 cards, which is a standard 52-card deck plus the jokers.

So we played Uno with his two decks of playing cards.

[popcar2]

My friend, you just rediscovered Crazy Eights: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazy_Eights

[madcaptenor]

In fact, Uno exists because one family liked playing Crazy Eights but got tired arguing about the rules, so they started writing the rules on the cards and eventually made new cards: https://www.museumofplay.org/toys/uno/

[InsideOutSanta]

That's interesting. I always assumed that UNO was a branded version of a very similar game we used to play as kids with a regular deck of cards (e.g. 7 is draw 2, Jack allows you to pick a color). The game is called Tschau Sepp and very commonly played in Switzerland. I just assumed other countries had their own version of it, and that UNO derived from it.

[n_plus_1_acc]

Called mau mau in germany

[jaapz]

A similar game called "Pesten" is played in the netherlands

Would not be surprised if there is a version of this game everywhere decks of cards are available

[Cthulhu_]

As with other commenters, we used to play a game similar to what is now Uno with a standard deck, we call it "pesten" (bullying), but the wiki page says it's similar to the US Crazy Eights, and internationally it's known as Mau-Mau [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mau-Mau_(card_game)