If you haven’t heard of Monopoly then you’ve probably been hiding under a rock for the past 60 or so years. It is a game in which you go around a board buying property and trying to put your competition out of business and thereby becoming a monopolist in the process. Sitting around a computer screen is hardly a substitute for the original boardgame but still the computer versions mimics the mechanics of the boardgame pretty well.
You can play the game with 2-8 players and you start by selecting an icon that represents you and throwing the two dice to see who goes first. The field is made up of a square, each side 11 blocks long, and with property becoming more expensive as you go along. You can buy property like waterworks, railroad stations and wellknown streets. All streets have a color and if you own all streets of the same color, usually three, you can put some realestate on them and make more money off of them. This happens when other players ‘land’ on your property and they have to pay you rent, the more realestate you own on that particular street the more they have to pay you. There is quite a bit of luck involved because some squares require you to pay tax or draw a card that can be either good or bad for you. If you have too much luck by throwing three doubles in a row with the dice you have to go to jail for cheating!
Monopoly as a boardgame is pretty fun when played with a bunch of friends and even though the digital version could never equal that it’s still handy to simply create extra players if you need some. The boardgame has been released worldwide and they have been localized to each country so the places in the game are from recognizeable places. Most of the versions here are US based but there are two French (AAA I HATE FRENCH!!) and an UK version. The DOS ascii based game actually allows you to add your own names to the game which is pretty unique as far as I know. If there’s enough people, I’d say four, to play the boardgame I suggest you do that because it’s more fun but if you need more players or simply prefer the digital one then this is excellent alternative.
Overal rating: 8/10
This game was released for many different systems here are some notes:
| Amiga | Released in 1986. Game has been tested but not completed with winUAE v0.9.91. Programmed in basic and offers little extra’s. You have to play the game with four players. |
| Amstrad CPC | Released in 1986. Game has been tested but not completed with winAPE v2.0 A6. Max 6 players at once and it’s French btw. Despite that I really dislike French I still managed to play it but unless you understand at least a little of the language it’s no fun. |
| Apple | Released in 1986. This is actually called L.A. land monopoly and the streets and stuff have different names but basically it’s the same game. |
| Atari ST | Released in ?. Game has been tested but not completed with Steem v3.2. Almost the same as the Amstrad version but it allows only 4 players and it’s also French. |
| BBC Micro | Released in 1987. This version is very low on graphics and most of the board isn’t visable at one time. |
| C64 | Released in 1987. Game has been tested but not completed with CCS64 v2.0 win. Programmed in BASIC and uses only C-64 ASCII graphics. Sadly only two players. |
| DOS | Released in 1998 by Adam Stevens. Game has been tested and completed on a DOS PC. Game does not work properly on my Win2k PC probably because of the hires textmode. It only uses ASCII characters for graphics but it does allow you to add your own streetnames, included are the US and UK names. |
| Megadrive/ Genesis |
Released in 1992 released by Magical. Game has been tested but not completed with WGens v2.11. Max 8 player. This plays like all the other console version but this has clearer graphics of them all because of the higher resolution it has. |
| NES | Released in 1991 developed by parker brothers. Game has been tested but not completed with FCE ultra v0.98.12. Max 8 players. You can choose several opponents from a list. This version is very much like the SNES one but with toned down graphics. |
| Super NES | Released in 1991 . Game has been tested but not completed with ZSNES win v1.36. Max 8 players. |
| SMS – Sega Master system |
Released in 1987 released/published by Sega. Game has been tested but not completed with Dega v1.12. Pretty much the same as the other console versions. |
| Windows | Released in 1992 by Virgin. Game has been tested but not completed on a Win2k machine. Altough made for Windows 3.1 systems it runs without any problems on newer windows version. You don’t have to install it and you can run poly.exe to start it. This has good highres graphics and sound effects and add to that the windows interface makes this the best version in my opinion. |
| ZX Spectrum | Released in 1985. Game has been tested and completed with emuZwin v2.5. Max 6 players. This is a lot like the Amstrad version only it’s in English. |
| Date added | Dec-16-2004 20:22 |
| Name | Monopoly |
| Developer | |
| Publisher | |
| First released | 1985 |
| Genre | Misc |
