Monopoly Electronic Banking Edition
by Hasbro
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List Price: Our Price: $26.99 You Save: $13.00 (33%) Availability: Usually ships in 6-10 business days Buy Used: from $19.00 (click here) Category: Toy See more product details |
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Toys and Games Reviews of Monopoly Electronic Banking Edition
Customer Review: Read this Before you Read any Negative Comments
Summary: 5 Stars
We bought this for our teenagers 3 months ago and they cannot stop playing it. It is the best version of Monopoly ever! I haven't played Monopoly since I was in my 20s and though I loved the concept of the game I hated sorting and picking up all the money, set up took so long that by the time I was set to play I didn't want to play anymore. I wanted my kids to enjoy Monopoly and I thought this was a great solution.
This game is pricey and I read all of the reviews on here before I bought it. I almost didn't buy because of some of the complaints on the reviews. However, I took a chance and after loving this game I thought I would comment on the negative reviews and their complaints:
First complaint: "The electronic banking takes a while to do transactions." It makes me wonder if they read the directions on the machine and realize that you can put cards in the negative and positive slots at the same time, type in the amount being transacted and it will automatically deduct and add to the appropriate cards. Besides the 2 cards that say, "Pay Each Player 500K", I don't know how that can be slower than actually exchanging paper cash!
Second Complaint: "One person has to be the banker and I never know how much is on my card." The banking device is the size of a calculator and we do not designate a banker we just pass the machine to each person during their turn. We have not played with more than 3 people so maybe when you add more people in this is harder. But if you want to keep track of how much is on your card; have the banker tell you your amount after each transaction and WRITE IT DOWN!
Third Complaint: "The Credit Card doesn't show my balance" Again write down your balance after each turn if you are worried, or just slide the card into the machine and it shows your balance.
Fourth Complaint: "I like dealing in cash, I can't bluff on how much cash I have" Then don't buy this version. I personally hate the mess of cash, and never got into a game deep enough to bluff. We also have young children in our house and if we leave the game out or they get in to the box, it is all over. We have The Game of Life and occasionally they climb the shelves to get at it and totally make a mess out of that game. We will probably be buying the electronic version of that game next.
Fifth Complaint: "They Changed The Properties" Yea they did, I like the old version too. But my kids think it is cool that they can buy Fenway Park. Plus, there were a couple of places they had not heard of so they looked them up and found out info on those places. That was cool.
So that is my take on the new Monopoly, for us it works and we will be playing a long time.
Customer Review: Great Improvement to Monopoly, but needs some fixing
Summary: 4 Stars
We played this game over the Holidays and I intend to buy it after trying it. I liked the updating of properties and new prices, but others might not. Elimination of paper money is a Godsend, I always felt it slowed the game down.
But it does create other problems. First off the glitches, we had some reoccurring problems with cards not getting recognized, or card #3 being recognized as card #2, which created major confusion of trying to give the right people back their money.
Then there is human error. The cards look very similar. It's easy to put the wrong card in, or put them on the wrong side of the debit/credit direction. Also "paying each player $X" is a huge hassle, as you have to grab each card and enter the amount in one at a time, careful not to mess up. Banker has to pay very, very close attention. I advise to have someone supervising the banker.
We sort of chose to announce each time we ran a card through what the remaining balance was to everyone. In the old game people liked to hide their money, if you choose this, it gives the banker an unfair advantage as he/she will know what everyone has.
The speed of the game increases, which is a huge plus, BUT, as the banker you find other players not realizing how long it takes to process a transaction, and they will get ahead of themselves, stacking multiple transactions before you know it. You will have to constantly tell players to stop and wait for you to transfer money.
The traditional collecting of taxes and fines on "Free Parking" is now impossible to implement. Which is a big bummer, cause that used to a be a life saver. Now instead you have to come up with your own preset amount you get for landing on the space.
I agree some of the educational value of adding up money is lost. But there is some new value added in the electronic input of numbers. You have to pay very close attention, and as I send there is a real possibility of human error with adults, much less children.
It's petty, but I wasn't crazy about the token choices. The space shuttle, HD TV, and baseball cap are fine. But a Segway? A box of Altoids? A mini dog in a purse? Who wants to be one of these? I know its not easy coming up with "sign of the times" type icons, but these are lame, and trendy not classic. (yes Segway is a tech item, I know)
Overall a good/great improvement. But the issues above need solutions.
The big bonus: clean up took 15 seconds, which is a nice change!
Customer Review: Disappointed
Summary: 4 Stars
I would bet that I haven't played the classic version of monopoly more than 3 times in the past 15 years. However, I must have played it many times as a kid... I remember most of the property names, most of their prices, and so on.
This electronic banking edition is based on the "Here and Now" Monopoly edition. I found the "modernization" of the game to be unnecessary -- basically multiplying every single number by 10,000 and then labeling everything with "K" (for numbers in the thousands) or by decimal-point numbers with "M" (for numbers in the millions).
The updated metal tokens are nice. For some reason, the "electronic banking" version doesn't include the stack-able skyscraper pieces (found in the non-electronic "Here and Now" edition) -- opting for the old house and hotel markers. These never quite fit; four houses being slightly wider than the space provided. Seems like the skyscraper markers are often cited as the one noticeably superior feature of the "Here and Now" edition, so it was disappointing not to get them in the electronic banking version.
The electronic banking feature is itself a double-edged sword. It does have a "coolness factor." It makes setup and cleanup slightly easier. My wife figured that it would prevent lost money. It also avoids certain "making change" annoyances. However, it's SLOW and kinda clumsy. Even after playing this game several times, we sometimes reverse cards, making transactions go backwards (they all look very similar). This would never happen with paper money. This also sucks away some of the educational value. I was hoping that my kids would practice adding and subtracting (they're in 1st and 2nd grade). Having the electronic calculator eliminates the exercise. With numbers like 280,000 and 1,750,000 to work with -- labeled 280K and 1.75M -- the math is too hard for them, anyway (for no discernable reason).
All in all, though, monopoly is an awesome game, and that still goes for this electronic banking version. We are enjoying it a lot, and in all likelihood you and your families will enjoy it, too.
Customer Review: Slows the whole game down.
Summary: 2 Stars
After you get over the new gadget thrill, you realize there is no real advantage to the debit card system. The only slight advantage it has is you don't have to make change. The big disadvantage is that it takes forever to make transactions. For example, you draw a card and every player owes you $500,000. GREAT! Now instead of everybody throwing their fifties at you in disgust, you sit and wait for everyone to stick their card in the electronic bank and type in 500K. The game comes to a screeching halt and its already long enough. Its even harder to keep your eyes on your properties to make sure you're collecting your rents when you're fiddling with another banking transaction. And as many others have stated, you never know how much money you have unless you keep sticking your card in, and then everyone knows how much you have. There is no way to bluff when you're bidding on properties. The best electronic Monopoly is the "Playmaster" which was made in the '80's. After playing with one, I looked and looked for one, but they stopped selling them. Found one on an on-line auction. The "Playmaster" sits on top of a regular board and handles rolling the dice and tracking where you are on the board. It randomly auctions properties to get them sold faster, then starts to buyback and auction single properties to allow monopolies to form quicker. You can take out loans to buy houses and it calls back the loan after 5-7 turns. This is not a mortgage as your properties are in full force to collect rent. If the game lasts longer than 3 hours, you're just dragging your feet. It makes it a very fast paced game. They need to re-release the "Playmaster". For now, look for it in on-line auctions. You need a regular game to go with the "Playmaster". Now if they had a "Playmaster" you could put your cards in where everyone could see the transaction, that might help. But, go back to the old values of $100 instead of $1,000,000...please!Customer Review: Won't replace money monopoly, but fun
Summary: 3 Stars
I'm by no means a Monopoly purist - if they can make it better, then I'm all for trying it. As someone who has pretty much done away with money in real life, I was especially interested in this credit card edition. It's fun, but still kinda flawed.
The first problem, is that the Banker could potentially screw up everything. With people throwing their debit cards at you for transactions, it's easy to get mixed up who has which card and whether or not it should be in the + or - side of the card reader. If you make a mistake, and are aware of it, it's easy to hit clear and it will reverse what you did as long as the cards are still inserted. If you don't realize until later though, there's really no way of knowing how to fix it since most people aren't aware of how much money they have or how much other people have.
The cards also take out a lot of the strategy of the game and makes it even more a game of rolling dice and less analyzing the competition and planning moves accordingly. And perhaps even more importantly, it didn't really make the game go by quicker. Since the math was never really tricky, the paper money didn't seem to be a time consumer until it was time to put everything away. The education isn't really there either.. you learn a bit about decimals, but still the computer is adding and subtracting everything for you so all you got to do is punch in a number or two.
Overall, I'm not especially impressed and am not expecting this to sweep the nation or revolutionize the classic game.