DO NOT
PASS GO...
(Without Picking Up
Star Wars Monopoly)

Review by Gini McDonagh

Star Wars Monopoly Limited Collectors Edition
published by Parker Brothers

Look in your basement or the top of the coat closet. It's there. An old Monopoly board, the ultimate savior of rainy-day fever. The hat, the shoe, everyone has a favorite playing piece, the one they know brings them good luck. Paper money in assorted colors, from the worthless white ones to the precious gold worth five hundred smackers. And all those plastic houses and hotels, the properties and utilities. A good Monopoly game can stretch over an entire weekend. But a lot of times they don't, because, let's face it, the playing field is a little...boring.

     Well, no longer. Now you don't have to play Monopoly for mere financial domination. Now you can fight for the cause of the Rebellion, or to maintain the discipline of the Empire. The Force has come to Monopoly.

     The Star Wars Limited Collector's Edition of Monopoly transforms an ordinary evening of board game fun into a battle for control of the galaxy. The properties are all renamed after Star Wars locales, ranging from low-value Dagobah to high-rent Coruscant, and photographs of these sites adorn the playing surface. The center is a color picture of the space battle above Endor, the Death Star hovering as TIEs and X-Wings fire. The only unchanged squares are the corners: Go, Jail, Free Parking, Go to Jail. And frankly, with their unsophisticated primary colors, they jar the eye.

     But the fun doesn't stop there. The playing pieces have been transformed into eight high-quality pewter figures, Heroes and Imperials. You can be Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker, a droid or a Storm Trooper. You can even be Boba Fett. Houses and hotels? Gone! Instead you fill your properties with X-Wings or TIEs (not particularly well-detailed) and then graduate to Star Destroyers or Millennium Falcons (delightfully detailed, despite being made of plastic). The money denominations are the same, but are Imperial Credits rather than dollars, and seven gold 1000-credit coins are also included. "Chance" and "Community Chest" cards are now Rebel or Imperial cards, and have been rewritten to fit the game (for example: "A Death Star Tractor Beam Pulls You Back Three Spaces" or "Let the Wookiee Win. Pay 50 credits").

     So, is it really enough fun to retire the dusty Monopoly board you already own and pay the 30 or so credits that the toy stores want? Without qualification, the answer is yes! Game play is exactly the same, so there's no learning curve involved. My children, who normally despise Monopoly, have played for hours. Of course, we modified the rules a bit, collecting 500 credits when we pass go, so that we can get those Star Destroyers and Falcons onto the board. Almost as if we were role playing, we take on the personalities of our chosen pieces. And laugh the hours away.

ECHO STATION Grade: A-

[Ed.'s Note: I'd love to know who at Parker Brothers decided that property at the Ewok Village would be worth more than those at Cloud City or especially those of the Death Star.  Those things weren't cheap, you know!]

 
(Gini McDonagh has been a Star Wars fan since opening night - the FIRST time around! She lives in Alaska with her husband and two daughters, who humble her by correcting her movie quoting.)