Monopoly Tycoon

by Atari

Product Features

• Manage each business
• Attract customers & generate cash
• Build in real-time
• Compete against up to 5 ruthless human or computer opponents
• Outbid competitors at property auctions to assemble a business & real-estate juggernaut

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00004T77P
• Item Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: September 26, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (70 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,955 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #14 in Video Games > PC Games > Board Games
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Amazon.com Review

Monopoly Tycoon is, put simply, a marriage between the classic board game and the city-building aspects of Sim City. It's an idea that shouldn't work as well as it does. Licensed games usually don't take risks, and that's what makes this one quite brilliant. Instead of churning out a quick Monopoly-related cash-in, Deep Red has dared to take Monopoly concepts and use them to make a fun, unique game, a game of city building, but also of property management and brutal economics, all encased in one gorgeous graphics engine. It looks as good as it plays.

After playing through a very detailed tutorial series of missions, you'll proceed to the main game: a series of locked scenarios, the next of which you unlock by succeeding at the previous one. There are three difficulty levels, and you can choose to play as any of the familiar playing pieces, each with its own personality, advantages, and disadvantages. The top hat is a stage magician, the dog is an old-money socialite, the wheelbarrow is a steady worker, and the racecar is a stuntman with a curling mustache. Respectively, the computer plays these opponents as cunning, shrewd, tenacious, and bold.

The game itself plays on a 3-D map. You can zoom in to see the wandering people and their cars, or zoom out to view the map top down like a board game. The layout isn't like the board game, however; it's more like a city, but Monopoly conventions hold true. Each block consists of two or three colored properties with familiar names. You can't buy these properties. You can build on any of them, owning various retail or residential buildings of varying size and height, and pay rent to the property owner, or you can engage in an auction to lease the property (for 25 years). If you lease all the properties of a color you gain a monopoly and can build lucrative hotels and even commandeer buildings away from rivals. You are all competing over convenience-oriented and fickle citizens, so property values, selection, and types of goods and services offered is what attracts them. A grocery store on St. James Place isn't going to command the same clientele or profit as one on Pennsylvania Avenue, and, of course, control of Boardwalk and Park Place is essential.

Chance cards exist as single-day random events, and you can even control the Railroads and Utilities and get money from your rivals that way (you get their services for free). The action begins in the '30s and moves all the way to the new millennium. The styles and cars all evolve to show the progression of time, a nice touch.

All told, Monopoly Tycoon is a must-buy for fans of the Sim or Tycoon lines of games. It's deep, fun, has a great multiplayer option, and has just enough Monopoly in it to be utterly charming to anyone familiar with the classic board game. Infogrames didn't invent the city-building game here, but they did reinvent Monopoly for the 21st century. --Bob Andrews

Pros:

• Attractive graphics
• Deep, charming, and satisfying gameplay

Cons:

• The interface is a bit cumbersome

Product Description

It's The Chance of a Lifetime…Product InformationWelcome to Monopoly Tycoon the competitive Sim for would-be tycoons! Monopoly Tycoon is a simulation game where the traditional fantasy of "owning it all" is taken to the next level. You come to this city with nothing but your inheritance and a dream to acquire wealth by buying and developing the Monopoly properties you know and love. Plan invest build demolish and bankrupt your opponents in a beautiful real time 3D environment populated by hundreds of citizens who will rent your apartments and buy from your businesses. It's all about money — and making more of it than your opponents.Create a business empire from Baltic Avenue to Boardwalk - one business at atime. It's all the risk taking and deal making of the Monopoly™ game and somuch more! Get to know the city its inhabitants and discover profitablebusiness opportunities. Create businesses attract the most customers andgenerate the cash you need. Compete for control of entire industries and citydistricts. With opportunities and pitfalls at every corner it's up to you tooutmaneuver up to 5 other would-be tycoons determined on bankrupting you.Take on 5 would-be entrepreneurs and compete dollar-for-dollar for completecontrol. Buy it build it stock it sell it or demolish it. Don't stop untilyou own it all!Product FeaturesIdentify the needs of the citizens.Gain an advantage by strategically exploiting lucrative business opportunities.Build up to 44 different businesses from the ground up.Choose the style size location and type of businesses to operate.Manage each business.Find ways to attract the most customers to generate cash and fuel a growingempire.Compete in real time.Outbid and outmaneuver up to 5 competing tycoons in a nonstop battle forcontrol.Watch your empire take shape.See your businesses come to life and strategies unfold.System RequirementsOS: Windows 95/98/Me or XPCPU: Pentium

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

48 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Decent game for sim enthusiasts..., October 16, 2001

By 

C. Gomez "SpaceShot" (United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Monopoly Tycoon (CD-ROM)

This isn't a bad game. I tend to use the full range of stars for reviews, so truly fantastic items get fives. Threes don't mean the game isn't worth your time, it just might not be your taste.

Positives: A well thought out spin on the classic monopoly game. All the elements are there. Railroads, properties, color groups, hotels, and of course, monopolies.

Looking for a competitive game that won't drain your whole afternoon? Want to know exactly how long the game will last? This game can be played with definite limits. A plus for those who have time windows to play in.

Differences: The game isn't so much about controlling the whole gameboard (in this case a city) or driving others to bankruptcy. Instead, you play against others in a race to complete the goals of the scenario. This might be overall sales, empire value, or election to mayor. Some scenarios do pick off players one at a time (in a Weakest Link style fashion), but this doesn't mean that player went bankrupt, just that they were in last place in some fashion when voting was conducted in the town by its "citizens".

Negatives: Marketing fluff - This isn't really a sim, but a complex game. To call this the world's first competitive sim isn't anywhere near the mark. Rollercoaster Tycoon is more of a traditional sim, and Simcity more so. This is definitely a souped up boardgame that is complex enough to require a computer to model it. Second complaint, this game has nothing to do with Rollercoaster Tycoon (Chris Sawyer). The folks at Deep Red have made a great game, but the association by the publisher ("brought to you by the folks who brought you") is plain irresponsible. That's like saying Activision "makes" Quake.

Depth: The game seems to have a lot of different strategy. I have gone down several paths to win scenarios. In other words, I don't feel like I've played the game out, yet. The Computer AI is challenging, but doesn't seem to practice the same depth of strategy I do. You get the feeling you can manipulate it. Online play may be a key here (haven't played online as of this writing).

Overall, I find this game fun and challenging, with enough variation to allow for subtle strategy changes mid game. Some people ARE reporting lockups and freezes on the community boards, but its unclear whether something is really wrong with the code itself, or these are jsut isolated issues. I myself am not dropping a warning on this for game stability.

26 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not bad, but not Monopoly, either, November 3, 2001

By 

Paul Cerra - See all my reviews

This review is from: Monopoly Tycoon (CD-ROM)

Monopoly Tycoon is significantly different from the Monopoly board game we've all played, so even if you liked the original game, you might not like this one. Monopoly Tycoon is a real-time strategy game where the object is to build up city blocks and satisfy the needs of the city's residents in order to win. The pace is fast, and the computer opponents know the rules and play hard even on the easy difficulty level.

Let me point out that you CAN play games against the computer without playing a scenario. I've read reviews that say this is impossible, but they are mistaken. The game allows you to host a multiplayer game with up to five computer opponents. You can also select various types of win conditions. Even though you are hosting a multiplayer game, if you want to play by yourself, simply start the game without any human opponents. Simple. But be warned; when playing multiplayer, you cannot pause the game nor speed up the clock.

There are a lot of positives to this game. I've had no problems installing or playing the game, and I only have a Pentium III/500 Mhz. The graphics are excellent -- true 3D with easy camera controls, wonderful lighting effects, night and day, cars and people that move about the streets, and more. The environment really makes the game -- it is well done and fun to look at.

Unfortunately, you don't spend much time looking at your creations. You're always on the lookout for new business opportunities, which typically means identifying a need for a given block (for example, your citizens might want a grocery store) and then building the appropriate store to service that need. Repeat indefinitely. You rarely have time to sit back and appreciate what you've built! The game does have some time-saving features that become easy to use with practice. But ultimately I found myself wishing that I had some time to enjoy my city.

There's some fun buried beneath the surface of this game, but it won't appeal to the average gamer. Unless you like economic warfare mixed with real-time strategy, this game probably isn't for you. And it really doesn't bear much relation to Monopoly. But it's still an innovative game, and it's certainly fun to look at -- when you feel you can spare the time just to look!

40 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars No, it's not "regular" Monopoly--it's better!, November 16, 2001

By 

Mystery Maven (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Monopoly Tycoon (CD-ROM)

Update: This will not play on Vista/Windows7 unless you disable the music/sound in the game menu. Which is disappointing because it's cool when the decade changes...the music changes to suit that decade. You may also have to right-click on the icon, choose properties, Compatibility and change to XP SP2.

Monopoly for the PC has been out for some time, so I don't know why the complaints about how this "isn't Monopoly". What's so exciting about regular Monopoly that take hours to play?

This game is fast pace and cut-throat. I can just imagine what the multi-player is like. Being that I haven't played that yet, I'll just stick to the single-player. It has the familiar game pieces (as their 3D representative character) and blocks. The premise is similar, but with a twist. Instead of hopping around a board via die roles, you pick a block and start building. The single player gives you progressive challenges each with 3 difficulty levels. You only need to complete the easiest level to progress to the next. You also have railroad and utilities that you can buy in some scenarios.

In single mode, you are pitted against 2 computer challengers and get scenarios such as "Be the first to make $2,000 in 1 day of business." This is where the "sim" comes in--you're not only building a wide array of shops, you're trying to build what will draw the consumers and shut out the competition. You poll the people in the neighborhoods near where you want to build to find their desires, which change over time. Fill a block with businesses and take it to auction--if you outbid the others, all of your stores get free rent/utilities for a period of time so that your bottom line grows. The game starts in the 1930s but ever 1 "day" is a five year advancement in time and you gain the ability to build new business that weren't available in the previous time period. Fads come and go so a store that was popular in the 1940s may not be in 1960s. That's okay because you can renovate and change the type of business it is.

If it sounds like you get bogged down with all this, don't worry, you don't. You don't have time as it's very fast paced. Building is a matter of choosing a business type and dragging the mouse over x-number of squares and it zooms to completion immediately. The larger the building and/or the nicer the frontage, the more it costs. You can also sell off businesses that aren't doing well or change them into a different business. You have day businesses and night ones so you have to pick your building time well. Money comes in from customers, but goes out when it's time to re-order supplies and pay rent at 6 a.m. Also, you want to keep an eye on your cash levels and those of your opponents so you can send your block to auction at the best advantage for you.

Like the traditional Monopoly, you can get "Chance" cards, some good, some bad. No passing go or landing in jail, though. One thing that's a neat touch is that the music changes to the appropriate period as you move through the decades.

The only things that can be frustrating is the auctions--the characters can be tediously the same. (If you decide to quit the auction, you can click a button and speed up the pace. I wish it would just do that itself instead of bidding continuing to come from the computerized opponents.) The other thing is that it takes you through specific challenges--you're not just allowed to play a regular multiplayer against the computer (at least at first--I haven't finished all of the challenges.) The scenarios do help you get started if you didn't do the tutorial, but it would be nice if you could pick and choose which ones you want to play instead of forcing you to complete each challenge before moving on to the next.

All in all, they've kept true to the idea of Monopoly, but have given a new spin to an old game.