You ever look back on something from your childhood, see it in a new light, and wonder
just how much of a dope you were?
That’s how I feel whenever I come upon this cart.
So may this review serve as my catharsis... despite my present-day love of all things
eurogame, I did enjoy Monopoly as a child.
So when I received a portable version for the Game Boy... well, I played the paint off
of it.
Shut me up but good for hours at a time.
Better than any pharmaceutical my parents could’ve administered.
At once, I’m taken aback by the underhandedness of the tactic, and rather bemused at how clever
they were.
Behold then, Action Video Monopoly, slayer of many a long car trip.
If you’ve never played Monopoly...
well, let’s be reasonable.
No one’s never played Monopoly.
Anyone who says they haven’t is just lying about it.
Love it or leave it, there’s a Monopoly for every taste these days, though this Game
Boy version - released back in 1991 - cares for none of it.
And those house rules you so love, the “dump all the fines into the center of the board”
clause, the “Roll 3 doubles and you have to buy ice cream” stipulation?
GONE.
You’re playing by the rules of the game, and only those rules, even the ones you’d
probably never heard of before.
Like having to auction a property if you don’t feel like buying it.
Fortunately, this being a video game, most of those more fiddly bits are completely automated,
such that the game doesn’t come to a grinding halt if someone needs to calculate what 15%
of their assets comes out to.
‘Cuz you all know a guy who did just that, knowing he was in last place, hoping that
everyone would just get bored and go do something else during the reckoning.
But if you take away... well, other people, the board, all the parts to get lost, and
some players’ misunderstanding of the rules, Monopoly makes for a fine fit for the Game
Boy.
You can handle all the business you require through the use of a simple menu system, from
managing buildings to making trades to viewing deeds.
This version also includes eight AI opponents, a number of pre-set scenarios if you’d prefer
to start a game from the middle and save yourself an hour or so, and the ability to speed up
the AI if you realized you’re just thirty minutes from your destination and you want
to see this thing through, by gum.
It’s really all you can do, since there’s no way to save a game state for later.
But while the game is perfectly functional...
it’s also as minimalist as possible.
During the game, you’ll rarely hear any music, and aside from the blip of a menu cursor
or the crunching of the distressingly anthropomorphic cash register, barely any sound effects either.
But I didn’t care.
I had digital jerks to run into the poor house.
Until we got to grandma’s house, that is.