~ Liverpool is only worth £1.6m ~ (Hasbro Monopoly Here & Now Limited Edition)

Member Name: blue_ashleigh

Product:	Hasbro Monopoly Here & Now Limited Edition
Date:	16/10/07 (1127 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Keele is on the board!

Disadvantages: It's no better than the old board

A few months ago the people of Monopoly held an online ‘competition’ to decide which cities got a place on the new Monopoly board. You could vote once a day for which ever city you wanted. If you weren’t from a city you could enter your place for the ‘wild card’ – i.e. the most voted for place that wasn’t a city! Anyway, a lot of students got involved and voted for where ever their University was. I’m studying at Keele and so obviously voted for Keele… anyway, after a month or so of voting the results were announced – Keele was the highest wild card entry and therefore got a place on the board (Colchester and Middlesbrough were the only other two wild card entries to make the board)! For those of you who haven’t heard of Keele, it’s a little village/ town in Staffordshire (near Stoke on Trent – which incidentally got on the board too!).

This is what Wikipedia say: “Keele, while being a small village of population less than 4000, managed to get high up on the leader board and at one point, the top position, thanks to the local university named after it. One student at the university, with help from others, rallied the student and staff population together to get Keele on the new board. The cause was called "Keele on the Monopoly Map", and e-mails quickly were being sent around the campus email system. Keele University has a combined student and staff population of just over 13,000” we also had various newspaper articles about Keele getting on the Monopoly board :) yes, it’s true, us students really have nothing better to do than try to get on the Monopoly board…

Therefore when the new Monopoly board went on sale, I felt obliged to buy it! The game is essentially the same, same rules etc.

The places are now:
Old Kent Road – Liverpool
Whitechapel – Leeds
The Angel Islington – Middlesbrough
Euston Road – Cardiff
Pentonville Road – York
Pall Mall – Colchester
Whitehall – Manchester
Northumberland Avenue – London
Bow Street – Derby
Marlborough Street – Plymouth
Vine Street – Lincoln
Strand – Dundee
Fleet Street – Keele
Trafalgar Square – Norwich
Leicester Square – Birmingham
Coventry Street – Oxford
Piccadilly – Stoke on Trent
Regent Street – Sheffield
Oxford Street – Cambridge
Bond Street – Nottingham
Park Lane – Exeter
Mayfair – St Albans

I’m used to playing the old Monopoly with £1, £5,… £5,000. Now however they’ve changed it, so that £1 is now £10k, £5 is £500k,…, £5,000 is £5million. After a while you get used to it, but to start off with it would get confusing, especially when someone asked you for £160,000 instead of £16 because I would immediately start to pay as if it were £160 in normal money… I resorted to thinking in colours - £1m is orange so £100, £200,000 is green so £20 etc. Anyway, I’m sure if you are slightly more awake and not half watching Grand Designs, you probably wouldn’t need to use as much brain power!

The chance and community chest cards have changed to things like – Fined for using your mobile phone while driving, pay £150,000 fine (a little harsh one might say!). Another amusing card (obviously written by someone with personal bitterness about the subject), you receive £3million inheritance money, after paying inheritance tax you receive £1million. There are other cards such as paying money to a cathedral, paying to hire a bridge for a party (as you do), paying to rent a London flat etc.

The rules are the same and the property prices are the same (except multiplied by £10,000!), so for example you would pay the owner of Leicester Square £22 for landing on that property, and now you would pay £220,000. My old Monopoly that I have has a booklet of rules; this new Monopoly has 4 A5 sides of rules. However, if you are used to playing Monopoly you don’t really need the rules anyway. There is a little section in the new rules that made me chuckle – it’s entitled How To Play A Quick Game Of Monopoly. If you wish to play a quick game of Monopoly, set a time limit and whoever has the most money wins (well duh!).

The pieces have also changed much to my disappointment - I was always the dog…! There is now a burger, a mobile phone, a roller skate, a plane, a car, and a skateboard. I do miss my little doggy…!

The game itself seems to be of a lower quality than the older version of Monopoly I have. There’s just a feeling that it’s of cheaper quality and not as well made. I know that’s happened with a lot of games and just in general, things seem to be made less well than they used to. I doubt that this Monopoly board will last as long as my old one (which is a good 20 odd years old!). Personally, I think that unless you live (or have an attachment to) any of the places on the board (or are an avid Monopoly board collector) then I wouldn’t buy the game. Obviously if you don’t have a game of Monopoly lying around somewhere then you really ought to get one (like now… go, go to the shops and get one! Shoo!), but I can’t see the advantages of this board over the original Monopoly board.

Basically I bought the board, partly because our electricity keeps getting cut off and we don’t have a Monopoly board at this student house, but mainly because Keele was on it, and no one has ever heard of Keele and it’s like a little achievement! However, if there hadn’t been a hype about voting for Keele and it hadn’t got on the board, I wouldn’t have bothered buying it but gone for the original board instead.

Summary: Keele is finally on the map! Oh yes!