Monopoly
by Hasbro Games
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Toys and Games Reviews of Monopoly
Customer Review: KA CHING!!!
Summary: 5 Stars
Searching for this site today, I noticed there are so many different editions of "Monopoly" out now. Deluxe, American, Junior, etc. It appears the reviews are mixed together. This review refers to the good ole original, regular editon, that I've had for several decades now, and it still continues to be a fun time, every time! For such a small price, it has given us years of fun.
The Box top is flattened, the money has a few folds, the edges of the cards a little worn,the board has some greasy finger stains and the middle fold shows use, but considering I've had this set over 30 years now, and the use it has seen, I'd say it's in darn good shape. Amazingly, we even still have all the playing pieces(I always have to be the little dog, or I take my game and go home!)
Just in case there is someone out there, who has never played this game, the object of Monopoly is to buy real estate, charge rent to anyone who lands on it, build it up with houses, or even better hotels. As you travel around the board, you go from the low-rent district, to the upper class and highly coveted properties. Buy these, improve on them and charge ridulously high rent, just like real life. The person with all the money and property in the end, as in life, is the winner. But also just like life, there are many ups and downs along the way. Life may through you curve when, you land on Community Chest. You have been assessed for property taxes(just after you spent all you money improving your real estate), and you have to begin to mortage your property to pay what's due. Other times, you may "inherit" money, or get a prize for winning a beauty contest. If you are really lucky, someone may land on "Boardwalk"(the most expensive property on the board), and owe you rent, after you've built a hotel on it.
It's a game that the entire family can play together and have a blast trying to wipe each other out!. Little ones can team up with mom, dad or big brother, and as they get older, it will keep them busy for hours with friends. I remember often playing it in college, till all hours of the night, when we should have been studying. Then I played with my own kids. I USED to let them win.Then I got tired of losing, so I whooped em good, not letting anyone get away rent free! But as they got older, they beat me at my own game, and delighted in yelling "KA CHING!" as they cleaned me out.
It's as educational as it is fun. Without even realizing it, kids will be using Math skills to make change, will need to read the cards they pick,and will learn to think about what they are doing with their money as well! Maybe, even see the value of keeping something aside for a rainy day, instead of spending it all at once. It's a nice taste of good competive fun, and good sportmanship is required!(well, try anyway)
Sometimes you will find, different people have different traditions. A community kitty, in the middle of the board, or having to go all the way around the board before you can buy real estates are some variations, that some people use and some don't. Please try to get these very important details sorted out before the game begins!!!!
A tradition that has lasted generations, and played by all generations.Put on the Holiday music and get out your game. It'll keep everyone busy for hours! WHAT??? You don't have this game? It's a must have, that'll keep em away from the TV or video games, for a while. Be careful though, you may get involved as well,and pretty soon you'll be yelling "KA CHING!"
Have fun, share this this old friend with a new generation, and Happy Holidays!
Laurie
also recommended:Hasbro Games Clue
and sci-fi and comic book buffs may also enjoy:Sci-fi Channel Trivia Book. The Ultimate Trivia Challenge
Customer Review: I could play this game forever!
Summary: 5 Stars
Many people think my love of this game is a little obsessive (well actually it is, but this is such a good game!) since I have three sets: Millennium Edition, Stock Broker and the Computer Version. However this game is a timeless (Player Haters would call it time wasting) classic. Since its creation over 75 years ago.The game has often been key to people during their childhood. Although I had played it at at a young age (thanks to Monopoly Jnr), it never was important to me. I guess it was because Mum did not like playing board games (Player Hater) and Dad worked wierd shift hours at the time, so I had no real opponents.
It was not until my 13th birthday that this game became important. For my birthday we took a trip out to the country with some friends and stayed at a bungalow near a lake. We did a great deal of exciting things on the trip, including a canoe race, bush walks and 4-wheel driving. One of the nights, we set up a game of Monopoly, and we played a relatively short-lived game. I actually lost, but I held on stubbornly until I finally had to declare bankruptcy.
This game and my doggedly stubborn nature in relation to it stayed with me and soon I became a very skilled player. I played the game anytime I could to hone my skills. Now I seem to win all the time and people don't want to play Monopoly with me thinking that I am just too good or just plain lucky.
Both statements are fairly true. I am very lucky. I seem to be able to avoid landing on certain properties after they are developed. However a great deal of my good fortune rests in skill. I have actually studied the game; knowing roughly how things will unfold from a single event. I know which properties have a higher probability of being landed on and which ones to trade. My skills are so good that I am able to know at an early stage of the game whether or not I will lose. All this is important as you cannot just put your token on the board and hope for the best; this is a game of skill like chess and a good poker face will get you anywhere.
This game also teaches you great skills. Yuonger people can gain good counting skills (especially when it comes down to getting 10% tax from your money and properties. Averages is good knowledge to know if you want to know what is going to be rolled (free knowledge: 7 and doubles pop up the most frequently).
Most importantly, you are playing a game within a 'real' environment and with real opponents. This gives you more than any computer game can give you, even if you are playing on the internet or over a network. The only time I use the computer version of for training and training alone. Anyway, the computer opponents are much different in their behaviour and predictablity than a real person.
All in all, if you want a game that is fun and educational, you won't find a better investment than Monopoly.
Customer Review: This version turns Monopoly into the Mediterranean Avenue of board games
Summary: 1 Stars
Please feel free to read this review in its entirety, or save yourself some time and avoid this version of Monopoly and buy the "Monopoly - Classic" version instead. While it is about double the price, it is the game you know and love. The less expensive version (reviewed here) is a piece of garbage.
I regret this purchase. If you grew up playing Monopoly, you would be much, much better off buying "classic" or a used version. There are several major issues with this version, as well as some minor ones. If you buy this to teach your children one of the most beloved games of your childhood and a part of Americana, you are apt to be disappointed.
The major issues involve quality and design. The board itself no longer folds in two. It is cut to fold into quarters and barely sits level on a table. I do not hold out much hope it will last very long. The property cards are flimsy, made smaller than in the past, as well as being thinner. The Chance and Community Chest cards are also of poor quality, much thinner than their predecessors, and take on color changes, now being blue/white and orange/white, instead of the familiar yellow and orange, respectively.
The money is a big concern as well. The money is thin and there are not enough slots provided to use money in the bank during play, or to store after gameplay, and in fact there are raised areas in the plastic money tray which prevent the money from even sitting in the spaces. The raised areas are somewhat random and follow no logical pattern. So forget using the box/tray component for the bank during a game or storing money neatly. The tray is essentially useless. I have no idea what Hasbro/Parker Brothers was thinking here, and apparently neither did they.
The minor issues are some game changes: The money is different color and handed out in different amounts. Very minor, yes, but now you have to get used to $10 being blue (used to be the $50) as well as some other color changes. You are also starting the game with different amounts of money. Also the Income Tax space is now a flat $200 instead of "10% or $200", and Luxury Tax is $100, no longer $75. Again, these are minor but worth noting.
I would avoid this cheaply made version. At the very least this should be advertised as what it is - "revamped Monopoly."
Customer Review: If you are annoyed by small "updates," this is not the set for you
Summary: 2 Stars
This Monopoly set was cheaply produced in China, as you might guess given its price. For a family looking for a first set, it seems satisfactory. But anyone who has played Monopoly for years should be on notice that this set, redesigned in 2008, includes several minor annoyances.
First, the most practical annoyance. The board folds up into quarters, which allows the manufacturer to fit the set into a smaller box, presumably to reduce production costs. But because the box is somewhat smaller (about 16 inches long), there is no room for the sort of convenient tray for Monopoly money that was once standard in the old boxes (which were about 20 inches long). This is annoying for both gameplay and storage.
Second, the producers have unnecessarily and inexplicably made small changes to the rules of the game -- rules that have stood for more than half a century. Landing on the Luxury Tax space used to cost you $75; now it costs $100. The new rules also change the numbers of each kind of bill to be apportioned to players at the start of the game -- and in fact, the game comes with a smaller supply of some bills.
Mention of this set's Monopoly money brings us to the third annoyance: the manufacturers made numerous gratuitous changes to the look of the game. The palette of colors used for Monopoly bills in the United States since the 1940s has been changed: The $10 bill used to be yellow; now it's blue. The $50 bill used to be blue; now it's purple. (These changes make it hard to reuse money from older Monopoly sets.) Among the other unnecessary changes to the look of the game: The formerly purple properties on the board (Mediterranean Avenue and Baltic Avenue) have been recolored brown. The Community Chest and Chance cards are now printed on white cardstock instead of the familiar orange and yellow, and the classic drawings on those cards have been replaced with computer-generated 3D cartoons. Even the "Go" space has been redesigned: now the word "Go" is written in black instead of the familiar red. (Stodgy purists might also be put off by the various alterations to font, logo, and other design elements.)
To be sure, these changes do not alter the fundamentals of the game itself. But they are annoying enough that anyone with nostalgic memories of the game from childhood should consider a different set.
Customer Review: Driving people into the poorhouse is not supposed to be a game!
Summary: 1 Stars
Who would have guessed that the street names of a small and seedy New Jersey town wouldn't be the basis for a fascinating and fun game? Surprisingly, Monopoly turned out to be a game that (1) was incredibly long; (2) involved slow, grinding failure for those who were losing; (3) involved almost no skill but also (4) none of the excitement of chance. As far as I can tell, the only joy people get out of it comes from handling play money.
In many board games one goes round and round. But generally there is the sense one is going SOMEWHERE. In Monopoly--more true to life--there is nowhere to go. Just keep working and paying the man. If one is attracted to the idea that repetition can be the highest ethical moment, one only needs to play this game to be quickly disabused. In contrast to, say, Mousetrap [see my review] which highlights the nature of irreversible transitions, in Monopoly one orbits around a gaping hole of debt, slowly circling inwards towards failure.
This is also, unfortunately, one of those games that children always think will be fun. But for some reason it is incredibly unpleasant to lose at monopoly. In chess, you die an honorable death. In Monopoly you are slowly sucked dry by other, increasingly hateful, players.
The funny thing is, apparently Monopoly was actually invented (not by the goofball who gave it the street names) precisely to demonstrate the theories of the great American radical economic theorist Henry George. George argued that the cause of human misery was private ownership of land, an ethical monstrosity in itself. The game shows that when we allow people to own property, then even if all start out equal and are equally industrious, things can only end in the most extreme inequality.
That was NOT supposed to be enjoyable. It is a testament to the perversity of the American economic and judicial system that we turned this cautionary tale into a game in which the goal is to "win" by sapping everything from everyone else. This is simply a horrible game: I don't understand why there aren't analogue games like "ethnic cleansing" or "slum clearance." [24]