Oh my god, seriously? This is what I have to spend my time on?
Before going too far, I want to stress an important point – Monopoly, a game in which anyone at any time can suddenly be in a beauty contest, is not a good game. There are numerous cornerstones of good board game design, and Monopoly has precisely none of them. I understand the appeal of rolling dice and seeing what happens, and of collecting all of your friends’ money because they rolled wrong, but that’s more or less all the game is – it’s an exercise in randomness. How it has caught on and become the board game everyone knows is beyond me.
…but what if we made it a video game instead? Let’s just cut to the chase – it’s about the same. It starts out well, though, with a sweet “character” select roster, which puts many fighting games to shame:
I chose the thimble (obviously). However, much like John Singleton Copley’s shark in Watson and the Shark, the makers of N64 Monopoly appeared to only have a vague idea of what a thimble looks like:
After this, you, uh…play Monopoly! I feel like you know how this game works. There are little animations of the pieces moving around the board and such, which can thankfully be turned off (Monopoly is enough of a slog without any extra bells and whistles). There are also some different set pieces for the game’s various situations, such as the auction mode, which looks more like Rich Uncle Pennybags is about to join our inanimate friends together in holy matrimony.
Happy pride month, every one.
All of the important options – buying houses, etc. – are available through a menu available on your turn. That part’s a bit clunky, but it’s functional. There are a few different game modes as well, including a “quick mode” that starts players off with a few properties and generally speeds things up. If you’ve ever thought to yourself that you’d like to play Monopoly but only want to waste a little of your time, this game’s got your back.
Adding house rules to Monopoly, which is somehow something that everyone does, only makes the game longer and more agonizing. While it isn’t necessarily a good thing to do, I kinda appreciate that this version of the game actually lets you do it if you want to. Making an already un-fun game worse is, if I’m being honest, part of the Monopoly experience, so it’s nice that you can make this game worse, too.
The biggest issue with this game, as I see it, is that playing a video game version of Monopoly leaves you without a physical board to angrily throw across the room. I guess you could throw your N64 across the room, but that would be unforgivable.
I’ve degraded Monopoly a lot in general in this article for its profound randomness and archaic design, but I think it’s also important to stress this – as with any board game, a lot of what can make it enjoyable is the people you play it with. If rolling dice and doing what you can to screw your friends over makes for a good evening for you, that’s great! You’ll probably enjoy this game, too. Plus, you’re never really alone when this weirdo is around:
I can’t be certain if this is due to a bug in the game or something else, during my playthrough the game completely froze up – after dozens of turns, the game just…ended, with no winner. Considering how many games of Monopoly go unfinished, it felt a bit appropriate. I had nothing but the face of an indifferent wheelbarrow staring back at me, as I contemplated my meager existence.
Godspeed, little wheelbarrow.
For our next entry, we’re checking out an under-appreciated NES game based on an immensely popular character. What could it be? Come back next week to find out.