The Benson Basement

I made this custom Monopoly game in the summer after high school. It’s classic game-themed!

All the regular properties are games. I ranked them in chronological order, so the oldest games are worth the most Points. (”Points” are the currency in this game.) Park Place and Boardwalk are Space War and Tennis for Two, respectively.

The utilities are Joystick and Keyboard, and the railroads are classic game systems (NES, Atari 2600, Commodore 64, and Arcade Cabinet). Taking the place of Chance and Community Chest are ? Block and Treasure Chest. The Jail has become the Dungeon, with a Trapdoor space taking the place of “Go to Jail”. The Luxury Tax and Income Tax spaces are now Insert Coin, and Free Parking is now Coin Return. Go has become Press Start.

The ? Block and Treasure Chest cards are all references to classic games. My personal favorites involve overdosing on Power Pills, “accidentally” shooting down Slippy Toad, and paying a medical bill for Zeke (who has been bitten by a snake). I also threw in some cards that don’t actually do anything, and are instead just cryptic messages. These include “It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.” and “ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US”. w00t.

The deeds to the properties have fun facts written on the back. For instance, you can learn about the “lurking” technique in Asteroids, or the links between Doom and the Columbine shootings. This helps to alleviate the boredom that comes with long, drawn-out games.

For the game’s fake money, I decided that each of the bills should feature a game villain. I used a space invader for 1, a ghost (from Pac-Man) for 5, Dr. Eggman for 10, Ganon for 20, LeChuck for 50, the Wizard of Yendor (or at least, my interpretation of him) for 100, and of course, Bowser for 500.

For the player tokens I have the following: Mario’s cap, Sonic’s shoe, the Master Sword, the cherries from Pac-Man, the hammer from Donkey Kong, and the Amulet of Yendor (or at least my interpretation of it). The houses are keys from a computer keyboard, and the hotels are little joysticks.

Want to make your very own Classic Video Game Monopoly set? The zip files below include all the files you need! If you want to make your copy have the same properties, cards, and money as mine, get the Standard version. If you want to modify the stuff I made, get the Editable version. The files in the Standard version are in PDF and PNG formats, while the files in the Editable version are in ODT (OpenOffice) and XFC (GIMP) formats. If anyone does make their own version of Classic Video Game Monopoly, I’d love to hear about it!
Classic Video Game Monopoly Files - Standard
Classic Video Game Monopoly Files - Editable