The mother of all board games (Monopoly)

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Product:	Monopoly
Date:	16/06/01 (43 review reads)
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Monopoly must be the most played board game ever, in the world, I mean is there anyone out there that has not dabbled in this superbly addictive and competitive board game, and at the same time, had many an argument with friends and family over the rules and various other things. I know the game is a very old concept, but it is a pure classic, that will be enjoyed for many a generation.

History of the game:

An unemployed American called “Charles Darrow” thought up the game in 1934, and took it along to show Parker Brothers executives, to whom actually turned the game down, because there where lots of design errors, but “Charles Darrow” was not to be denied, and with the help of his friend, decided to produce the game himself, as you can imagine, once the demand for the game increased out of control, he found himself struggling to keep up with the demand, so he went back to Parker Brothers, and they decided to take on the game, something to this day, they have not regretted, as a matter of fact, Monopoly’s creator, Charles Darrow died in 1967, after becoming, the worlds FIRST game designer millionaire.

What is the game about?

Monopoly started off as a simple BUY and SELL property game, and the aim is to build up your own properties, while at the same time, try and bankrupt the other players, you play the game on a board, that consists of various Streets, Properties, Utilities, Train Stations, and various other squares, like Got To Jail, Community Chest, Chance, etc.

At the start of the game, each person chooses a piece, to which they want to use as their marker for the game, each player is then give £1500 to start the game off, each player then throes one single dice, to see who goes first, the highest being the first, then it goes around the board clockwise. As you move around the board, you land on certain squares that either, give you the chance to buy the property or utility, pay out
taxes, pay rent to the owners of the properties, go to jail, etc.

As the game progresses, and you have bought properties, the aim now, is to get your properties loaded with houses or even a hotel, but this is not as easy as it sounds, because at the same time, you are landing on the other players squares or income tax squares, and your money is soon being drained away.

There have been many an argument about what’s the best strategy to be successful at Monopoly, do you buy everything you land on or do you keep your cash to try and get the more valuable properties, I used to prefer to bide my time, and try and get hold of the properties in the last half of the board, which would give you lots of rent collections and can be real bankrupter’s once you get them built up with houses and hotels.

Well anyway, without going into the full instructions of the game (to which would take me all week), you’ll realise by now, that you need to build up pretty quick, and also need quite a bit of luck in missing out on having to pay too much out to your competitors, it’s a fairly simple to understand game, once you get to grips with it.

The end of the game arises, once a single player has managed to bankrupt everyone else, or you can also play it by time, for instance, give the game a two hour limit, the winner being the person with the most cash and properties owned.

Over the years, Monopoly has spawned lots of different versions, like different countries, cities, football teams, junior monopoly, and more recently, there is even a dot.com version of the game, and it is also available as a computer version on CD-Rom.

Some interesting facts, about Monopoly:

It is believed that over 200 million games have been sold, across the globe.

More than five billion little green houses have been built since 1935.

The longest game in history took 70 straight days to finish.

I
know 99% of people reading this opinion, will no doubted to have played the game, and enjoyed the superb game play, and also had one or two arguments over it and the other 1% must be off another planet, but everyone has to agree, Monopoly, will go down in history as “The mother of all Board Games”.

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