Monopoly

• NA release: 18th December 1999
• JP release: N/A
• PAL release: N/A
• Developer: Mind’s Eye Productions
• Publisher: Hasbro Interactive
• N64 Magazine Score: N/A

Monopoly is an atrocious board game. I’ve played many, many board games, and none are as horrible as Monopoly is. Most of the game is just autopilot – roll dice, move, do the obvious action (buy property/pay rent). The only actual choices are more involving trading, which is heavily dependant on who is playing.

This is simply an N64 version of that terrible board game, and this conversion of Monopoly into a video game is fairly mixed, so I’ll talk more about what this version does rather than the game itself.

Visually, it’s pleasant. Instead of just a board, it’s in a field with buildings representing the properties around it, with a day and night cycle to signify the endless nature of Monopoly. You can pick between the standard US board and the standard UK board (even though this game was never released outside the USA), but the style doesn’t change – it looks more British than anything, which makes sense, as the developers were British.

The pieces move around the board with some animations that start off nice, but grow tiresome very quickly, as it massively slows down the game. Even if you turn these off, the animation of your piece warping is still too long. It makes the game drag even more than usual.

Trading is also very confusing, with a very awkward menu that makes it a nuisance to sort anything else, far more hassle than trading in the physical board game. The CPU players will also refuse to trade, unless you want to massively overpay for stuff. This means that making sets is extremely unlikely to happen, making the game grow stagnant and grind to a halt, as players just circle the board, staying at the same level.

There are a few options to adjust gameplay, such as starting with properties. You can even turn on some awful house rules, such as putting money on free parking, which does nothing but drag out the miserable experience even longer.

Monopoly is an alright conversion of a dreadful board game.

Worst

Remake or remaster?

There are unfortunately many newer versions of Monopoly.

Official Ways to get the game

There is no official way to play the N64 version of Monopoly.

Europe

Japan

North America

board game N64 worst