What was different:

The thing that I love the most about this set is that there are very few differences between it and a classic Monopoly set that we all grew up with.  The board has no changes and neither do the community chest and chance cards.  The tokens, however, are gold colored instead of silver.  The dice are red instead of white.  The houses and hotels are made of wood and slightly larger than a regular set, so they don’t fit as nicely on the board once you have reached the four house level.  It also comes with a playing and history guide, similar to the one you see in the 1935 reproduction set.  It has the complete 50 year history of the game and how it originated as well as instructions on how to play.

The set is very nice and sells for nearly $30 used.  I will keep mine and play with it many times.

I have made a youtube channel recently with all the information you could ever want on Monopoly.  Check it out and subscribe: http://www.youtube.com/user/monopolybestgameevar

As some of you may have known, Hasbro, EA games and Nintendo, have come together to make Monopoly, the game we all know and love, into a video game.  The game has all the features of a Monopoly game, you play on varies boards with computer or other human players.  You can customise rules however you like depending on how you play.  It is like Pogo Monopoly except it costs $50 vs. getting a free pogo account.  Ok, so there are a few features in this game that are better than Pogo.

What I like:

The use of Wii technology: This game tries to make an effort into making the incredible technology of the Wii to the test.  One of the most interesting things that I found out while playing this was that when it was your turn to roll, when you shake the Wii remote, it sounds like dice rolling.  The graphics are also pretty good in this game. 

The Extra Features: Besides playing Monopoly on a variety of boards, you can: play super-fast mode, Rags to Riches mode, play mini-games and unlock all of these features as you win games.

The Gameplay: You can do anything you can do in a game of Monopoly normally.  You can change the rules as you like.  You can play against computer players at 3 levels.   

What I don’t like:

The use of Wii technology: There is really no point to have this game on the Wii.  Sure the graphics are nice, but is it really necessary to play a Monopoly game? 

The Extra Features: Ok, Monopoly mini-games, really?  The games are a pointless edition only to make it seem like you are getting more when they are the most boring games you will play.  Their titles range from Pay School Tax to Christmas fund Matures.  Is it even conceivably possible to have a halfway decent mini-game with that title?  The Rags to Riches mode  uses these mini-games and is really not fun. 

The Gameplay: While you are playing the game, Mr.Monopoly is following your piece around.  Now this would be Ok if he didn’t talk.  Every time you do anything, buying a property, building houses, trading, anything, he has to say what that means.  Now this is every single game, not just the tutorial.  It can get really annoying after a while.  Another thing that is a poor quality of this game, like pogo, the computer players are way to easy.  Even when you put them on hard, I can easily crush them.  Sure, I am a good Monopoly player, but I need a challenge.  The game needs an expert CPU level added to this game for us experienced Monopoly players out there. 

All in all, I do enjoy playing this game.  There is nothing that wrong with it for me to shove it into the dust.  I only play on the classic board anyway, so I ignore the extra features.  I received it as a gift, I don’t know if I would have bought it on my own, but I am glad to have it.  If you don’t want to buy it however go to http://www.pogo.com/games/monopoly .  Also check out my YouTube channel for all of my latest Monopoly videos and subscribe to receive updates http://www.youtube.com/user/monopolybestgameevar

The things about this edition that I like: The houses are made from wood!  I saw this edition at the store and saw the houses, I knew I had to have it.  The tokens also look different, the car looks like a car from the 1930′s.  Most of the tokens are different, and if you are like me who has one token that they have to play with, move it from your old set over to this one.  I was surprised to see that there was no dog in this set, so I still use my old rusty one to play with. 

The pictures on the Chance and Community Chest cards are also different because there was no Mr.Monopoly cartoon at the time!  He wasn’t out untill recent editions.  There is also one mistake I would like to point out.  Marvin Garden’s first rent is $22 not $24.  Yet all the other prices are the same.  Oh, and there are absolutely no prices written on the board for any of the properties.  The instructions say to look at the mortgage value of the property and double it to find out the price.  But if you know all the prices in the game like I do, the people you are playing with will (a) be shocked at your Monopoly knowledge or (b) think you are either crazy or a total Monopoly geek for knowing such pointless information. 

The game also comes with a cute brochure about Monopoly’s history.  So for about double the cost of a regular Monopoly set, you get a higher quality one.  I really enjoy playing with this new set, if you play a lot it is worth the money because it will last you a lot longer than a regular one (all the paper is more durable). 

I also started a YouTube channel last week about Monopoly.  I will be making new videos every Sunday or Monday about the game.  The channel is  http://www.youtube.com/user/monopolybestgameevar  I have one video so far, 40 Facts about Monopoly. 

So check out my video and have fun playing this edition of Monopoly!

Rule Changes:

The rule changes in this game were very bazar.  The first was the fact that all tokens started in the center of the board.  The person who rolled the highest number would then move counting Go as 1 and moving forward.  This game also started out with $1200.  This game was played with the rule of Free Parking.  One of the strangest rules was the fact that you could not pay to get out of jail right away.  You had to wait 3 turns and then whatever you rolled on the 3rd roll you moved, paying $100 if it was not a double.  You also had to pay 15% to unmortgage properties but we didn’t play with that rule because it was too hard to calculate and we always forgot. 

What I like about this game:

By far the best part of this game is the Contingency cards.  They say things like ”Advance any token to any space of your choice”  and “Lose 2 turns” and “All Campus Party! All tokens advance to Fraternity Row”.  While these cards completely violate traditional rules of the Monopoly game, they are really funny.  We were laughing so hard every time a Contingency card was drawn that it almost made up for the fact that the game rules made no sense. 

What I didn’t like about the game:

I don’t like that the colors of groups were changed.  The prices were messed up as well, the first 2 properties in a group were $10 less than they should have been and the last property was $10 more.  I don’t really like rule changes in general, but it was interesting to play with a completely different set of rules, so I had to change my strategy.

By the way, despite everything, I still won the game!

P.S. Sorry if you cant see the pictures

Longest Game Played in a Bathtub: 99 hours

Longest Game Played Underwater: 45 days

Longest Game Played Upside-Down: 36 hour

Largest Outdoor Game Played: 550 inch. by 470 inch. gameboard with real people as tokens and large foam dice that were thrown from the fire escape of a building

Largest Indoor Game Played: 122 inch. by 122 inch gameboard

Smallest Gameboard: 1 square inch

Most Expensive Set Ever Produced With multiple Copies: Dunhill Set With Solid Gold Playing Pieces, Worth: $25,000

Most Perishable Set Ever Produced: Neiman-Marcus all-Chocolate set, Worth: $600 in 1978

Largest Price Paid On eBay For Most Expensive Parker Brothers Edition: About $10,000 For The 1936 #25 Deluxe Wood Edition

Closest Call From Real Life: In 1972 , Parker Brothers-And Public Sentiment- Convinced Atlantic City Officials Not To Change The Names Of Baltic and Mediterranean Avenues Because Both Avenues Have Different Names In Some Parts Of Town And The City Officials Had considered Simplifying Matters

Nicest Impact Of Progress In Real Life: The Opening Of Amtrak Service To Atlantic City in 1989

Most Notable Achievement Of Economics In The Monopoly Game: No Price Inflation In Over 1/2 A Century, The Values Have Been The Same Since 1935

Now to my dad’s side of the family.  They are a traditional Monopoly family.  They played with house rules growing up and the children learned to like it.  They played the game incorrectly, but at least they learned how to play.  I grew up learning house rules for Monopoly as well, but as soon as I read The Monopoly Companion I never used them again. 

If you are someone out there who hates Monopoly, give it a chance.  Play by the official rules and try to change your option about it.  It is too late for my mom, belive me I’ve tried, but it might not be too late for you or someone you know to learn to love this great american board game.  

I am so excited about this holiday season.  The second I get out for Christmas break, I am sitting on my computer and playing Monopoly.  I plan on playing for a full 24 hours, and if I succeed I will give you the story of my Monopoly adventure.  I also plan on playing with my cousin Marina, who is great at the game.  We are very evenly matched competitors.  She will tell you about the Monopoly games we play as well. 

Oh, by the way, a Monopoly Documentary is coming out, I am so excited.  I will tell you more about it later, but for now you can watch this trailer for it.  It is called Under the Boardwalk.

http://www.monopolydocumentary.com/  The website is also full of other great information about Monopoly as well as tournament information that you can’t find anywhere else.  The date of released has not been set, but it will hopefully be out by summer 2010.  

Happy Holidays, I hope you beat everyone in your family in Monopoly.

The online hit game, Monopoly City Streets,  has officially ended.  The game was a huge internet success, over 5 million people from across the world played the game during the three months the game was on.  Players purchased 9 million streets and more than 175 million buildings.  I played this game for a short time.  I purchased only one street and a few houses on it.  I purchased the street I live on, so nothing fancy and then bought my house as well as some of my friend’s houses.  I did not test out the hazard buildings or have any of my buildings destroyed.  There were over 1.8 million hazard buildings built and over 2.5 buildings destroyed.  Negotiation was a big part of the game, like it is in regular Monopoly, but 52% of all the offers made in the game were denied.  Some properties on Monopoly City Streets were more desirable than others.  

The top 10 most popular cities were:

1.    New York City

2.    Paris

3.    London

4.    Las Vegas

5.    Tokyo

6.    Miami

7.    Madrid

8.    Berlin

9.    Barcelona

10.    Los Angeles

The top 10 streets searched were:

1.    Wall Street

2.    Route 66

3.    Broadway

4.    Oxford Street

5.    5th Avenue

6.    Rue De La Paix

7.    Rodeo Drive

8.    Times Square

9.    Main Street

10.    Yonge Street

 Since the Monopoly City Streets online was such a success, the Monopoly City board game has just come out, so you enjoyed playing Monopoly City Streets, check Monopoly City here http://www.amazon.com/Monopoly-1790-City-Edition/dp/B001RNHE6W/ref=sr_1_1/186-3061536-1074637?ie=UTF8&s=toys-and-games&qid=1260990963&sr=8-1

I now regret that I had not played Monopoly City Streets while it was on.  The board game however, is very similar.  You can play with your friends and family and build more than you ever could before.  You can even build sewage plants to destroy your competitor buildings.  The buildings are 3-D as well.  Includes game board, 6 movers, buildings, 22 District cards, 25 Chance cards, 6 Reminder cards, 1 Rent Dodge card, 2 dice, 1 money pack, 1 trading unit and instructions. Requires 2 AAA batteries (not included). For 2 to 6 players. Ages 8 and up.  I am considering buying this game because it sounds like a really interesting spin-off on regular Monopoly.  But I am disappointed in a Monopoly edition about 50% of the time, so I will read some reviews on the game before purchasing. 

Some reviews said the game was very long, even by the official rules the game took more than 3 hours to play.  I like a long board game, but really, Monopoly in any edition should never last much over 2 hours.  The money stays in the game for a really long time, so it is hard to put an end to the game.  There are a lot of cards that you can avoid paying rents with.  It takes a lot of bad-luck for a player to go bankrupt. 

OK, so maybe I won’t be buying this game until Hasbro has some serious game modifications being made.  But if you have a really long family weekend and you need something to entertain you for hours on end, buy this game and try it out.  Tell me what you think of it.  (If  you want a long game without buying this one, just play with house rules on the original, you will be playing for weeks!)

Thanks for reading and sorry that Monopoly City Streets ended , but all good things must come to an end, and who knows , with the proper game modification, Monopoly City could be a really big hit!

Citation: http://www.hasbro.com/monopoly/en_US/discover/news/Monopoly-City-Streets-Has-Ended.cfm

The money amounts have also been changed, it now costs 1 million dollars to buy Boardwalk, which is called Times Square in this edition.  This game does end the conflict of what the Monopoly properties would be worth today, but they would have to change the amounts constantly because house prices are changing so frequently.  I think these properties would be worth so much more than these amounts, that is why I like Monopoly World Edition much better, not only for the better pictures of places around the world, but also for the amounts that are so much more realistic.  All they did was turn $100 into $1,000,000 on every property around the board, I think that 4 million dollars for Montreal is more realistic than 1 million in Here and Now edition.  All the same, I enjoy The Monopoly Blog even though he stopped posting 3 years ago.  You should still go to his site and read the old posts, many of which are still good news in the Monopoly world today.  The link is http://only-monopoly.tripod.com/blog/

A great place to play Monopoly World Edition is at http://board-games.pogo.com/games/monopoly  I love playing on this site so much.  I probably play near 10 games a week.  You get to play with people all over the world live.  You need to sign up for a pogo account in order to play, but it is 100% free if you don’t mind playing with ads and selected tokens.  I am very cheep and have played free online games, download, ect. for years now and they are full of annoying ads that interrupt game play and make you lose your focus.  You can cope with them and just get your mind-set in Monopoly and never lose that focus.  In Monopoly tournaments and even playing Monopoly at home, there are so many distractions that the ones on the computer seem so minimal.  You need to try playing on pogo Monopoly if you don’t have anything else better to do with your life because you will get addicted, fast.  The only problem is that when people quit in  the middle of the game, computer players come in, and they are way too easy to beat.  I always quit the game if a computer player enters .  So, go to that blog and play Monopoly on pogo.

Today I will tell you about the Monopoly Mega edition.  I bought it about a year ago, thinking it would be a more interesting way to play Monopoly.  The differences between this edition and regular Monopoly are that there is more money, more properties, rule changes and the speed dice is used.  There is $2500 given out at the start of game play, with one $1000 bill included.  The board is much larger and includes 12 new spaces and 9 additional properties.  The new properties are Yellow California, Dark Blue-Florida, Light Blue-Massachusetts, Pink-Maryland, Red-Michigan, Orange-New Jersey, Green-South Carolina, Dark Purple-Arctic Avenues, and Utility-Gas Company. 

The new rule changes to this game actually make the game shorter.  The properties are sold faster because of the speed dice.  If you don’t know how the speed dice works, I will give you a brief summary.   The speed dice is and extra dice used in game play.  The six sides have the numbers 1, 2, 3 as well as 2 sides will Mr. Monopoly.  The last side has a bus on it. The Mr. Monopoly side when rolled moves you to the next un-owned property in the beginning of the game.   So if you roll a 3 and 4 on the regular dice and then roll a Mr. Monopoly, first go 7 spaces and you can buy the property if it is un-owned or do any other action necessary on the space.  Then move to the next un-owned property and buy or auction it.  When all the properties are sold, move to the next property you owe rent to.  The dice makes the properties sell faster and bankrupts people faster.  If you try to play this game without the speed dice, it will take a very long time, I tried once and the game lasted 5 hours.   The bus on the speed dice can make you draw card and use them later in the game to move to desired spaces on the board.  You can use this card at the beginning of your turn to move to any space in the row you are in.  These are very useful and there are only 16 and there are no more when they run out, so use them wisely.  But they do expire when the all bus tickets expire card is drawn from the bus ticket pile.  Use the bus tickets sooner before the card is drawn, and save them after the card is drawn.  If you roll 3 of the same number with the speed dice, you can choose to move to any space on the board after moving your normal roll.  When you are in jail and are rolling to get out, you do not roll the speed dice. 

Another nice thing about this game is that you don’t have to own the whole color group in order to build houses and hotels on it, you don’t need to have one of the properties, so 3 out of 4 or 2 out of 3 if its dark purple or dark blue.  In order to build skyscrapers however (a new addition) you need to have all the properties in the group.  The skyscrapers will allow you to collect huge rents.  You can also build railroad depots on any railroad (even if you only own one) to double its rent. 

Overall, this game is alright.  It is defiantly different.  If you like playing with the speed dice you might like this game.  But if you want to play a really short game, play regular Monopoly with the speed dice and you can be done in under an hour.  This game still takes time with the speed dice.  If you want something different from regular Monopoly, you can play this, but honestly, it’s not different enough for me to want to play it instead of regular Monopoly.  If I can mange to get my family around the table to play Monopoly with me, I would pick the classic edition in a heart beat.  If you aren’t a huge fan of classic Monopoly, try this one because it is more like a combination of other games with Monopoly.  I really enjoy playing this game without the speed dice and bus tickets but keeping all of the other rules, but as I said it take a much longer time to play.  If I went back in time, I don’t think I would have spent the $40 of my hard-earned money on this game, it just isn’t that different.  I have only played it 3 times vs. the hundreds of times I have played with my classic set.  I use my classic set so much that I had to buy a new one.  I was much happier with that purchase.

I will now explain how one can enter one of these championships.  You must frist locate tournaments going on in your area.  They are typically hosted by an organization such as boy/girl scouts or as a fundraiser to benefit a charity.  You can then enter a tournament, usually for a fee to benefit the charity.  Make sure the tournament you enter is playing by the official rules and plans to submit the results to Hasbro so it will count towards higher level tournaments.  

If  there is no tournament in your area and you would like to participate in one, why not host your own.  It is a great way to help a cause you care about and it will be a fun activity for all. Go to  http://boardgames.about.com/gi/o.htm?zi=1/XJ&zTi=1&sdn=boardgames&cdn=hobbies&tm=52&gps=223_81_1260_864&f=00&tt=12&bt=1&bts=1&zu=http%3A//www.hasbro.com/games/kid-games/monopoly/content/News/PDF/tournament_guide.pdf  for official information on how to host your own tournament. 

The tournaments are timed games until the very final round in the World Championship where the best of the best in the world compete.  The players in the final round were from Russia, United States, New Zealand, and Norway.  There was an exciting trade early in the game between Russia, Norway and the US.  Russia had the green properties, the US the pink and New Zealand with the oranges.  Just from this part of the game, it would seem that New Zealand would win because the oranges are the best group in the game.  The US and Russia did in fact land on the orange properties shortly after the trade, putting New Zealand in a great position.  But now, Norway was back in the game with a full light blue set, without having to trade.  He quickly built 4 houses on each property.  Russia quickly became bankruptt after already being damaged by the oranges.  The U.S. then became bankrupt to Norway, making Norway the dominant player on the board with nearly all the properties other than what New Zealand had.  New Zealand still felt confident however in his place in the game.  New Zealand landed in jail, saving him from Norway’s high rent for a few turns.  In a lucky twist of fate,  Norway landed in jail as well.  New Zealand rolled doubles and got out of jail, landed on Norway’s properties and went bankrup, making Bjorn Halvard Knappskog from Norway, the World Monopoly Champion!  He was the winner of  $20,580, the amount of money in a monopoly bank  in a classic set.

This is a huge event and there will be another one next year in another country to be determined.