Monopoly Playmaster (1982)

An electronic Monopoly accessory that adds auctions and Mortgage "calls' to the game.

The electronic play aid also keeps track of player token locations and rolls the dice. It knows which properties are bought and which ones are still available. The only things it can't keep track of are the Community Chest and Chance cards.

Eight simple tunes indicate certain game actions and can get a little annoying at times (e.g.- "I've Been Working on the Railroad" plays every time someone lands on a railroad), but overall the presentation is well done.

Back in the early 80's when this came out, everyone was fascinated with video games and the old board games like Monopoly were afraid they'd be forgotton. I remember reading a newspaper article announcing the Playmaster as the "first time the original Monopoly game was ever tampered with". It was supposed to allow the busy family of the 80's to squeeze a game of Monopoly in their busy schedule, making a Monopoly game take only an hour or two.

It sped up game play in the following ways:

• When you landed on a property, it was always sold. Either you bought it yourself for the face value, or it went up for auction. (This is actually the rule in standard Monopoly. Many players are unaware of the rule, or avoid the complexity of an auction, instead letting unwanted properties remain unsold. The Playmaster edition does not allow this "house rule".)
• The game would call "auctions" on unowned property occasionally, to get property into the hands of someone as fast as possible.
• After all property was owned, the game would call for "buybacks". A certain color group would be called in, and if you owned some of the group, but not the whole group, you would be required to sell it to the bank for face value (regardless of what you paid for it). Then the whole color group would go up for auction as a whole. This helped get ownership of groups, so they could be improved and the game would end quicker.
• In addition to standard mortgages, you could take loans on a property group. You had to own the entire group, and could only loan on a group once the entire game (the computer kept track). Unlike mortgages, you could improve properties with the loan, and still collect rents on a loaned-against property. Again, this sped up game play as properties would develop more quickly. The loan would be called in no less than seven dice rolls, but, if you were lucky, considerably longer.

The game had some problems with execution:

• Being an early electronic device, the only user-interface was LED's and buttons, as well as musical tones. To save on costs, the game used the same LED's for several purposes, making things more confusing than they should have been.
• The manual wasn't written very well, and along with the complicated UI, made the game hard to pick up.
• The game relied on an AC adaptor, which I'm sure made parents happy that they didn't have another battery-hungry toy, but it annoying having the cord draped across the game board. And if you accidently unplugged it, the game would come to a sudden and unfortunate end.

I'd like to see this game accessory redone with modern technology. With today's LCD interfaces and cheap technology, it could actually work, I think. Many reviews of this game on the 'net are quite negative, mostly concentrating on the confusing nature of the game. But once you learned it, it worked very well and served its purpose to play a game of Monopoly in a fraction of the normal time.