Heinz Ketchup Monopoly

The whole “ketchup board game” is kooky enough, but how can Heinz possibly fill an entire Monopoly board with spaces based on ketchup? A better question, though, is… Who on earth would buy this?

QVC Monopoly

The properties are products. The houses and hotels are “Greenrooms” and “Studios.” Instead of “Community Chest” and “Chance” cards, they have “Quality” and “Value” cards that say things like, “You receive an invite from Kathy to buy something nice! Collect $100!” I couldn’t make this up.

Batman & Robin Monopoly

Out of all the Batman movies, they choose to make a board game out of this one?

Ghetto-opoly

Not an officially licensed Monopoly game, but distributed widely enough to offend pretty much everyone who saw it when it first came out. According to the back of the box, Ghetto-opoly is all about “buying stolen properties, pimpin’ hoes, building crack houses, paying protection fees, and getting car jacked.” Oh, and the game pieces? A pimp, hooker, basketball, liquor bottle, Uzi, Marijuana leaf, and bag of crack cocaine. Lovely.

Powerpuff Girls Monopoly

Warning: contains enough sickly sweet cuteness to kill a puppy.

Dot-com Monopoly

A celebration of the online business boom of the 90s (which later bombed). The game spaces are made up of dot-com companies like eBay, iVillage, AltaVista, and others you may or may not remember. Game pieces include a desktop PC, a hand cursor, an arrow cursor, a surfboard (get it?), a flat panel monitor, a mouse (the animal, not the hardware), an envelope representing email, and a microchip. Ain’t that precious.

Bean-opoly

A coffee-themed game from rip-off look-alike publisher Late for the Sky, this a way over-the-top variant for the Starbucks set.

HP Invent Supply Chain Monopoly

Monopoly for the corporate shark, that supposedly has the real-world application of “helping you own all 22 steps in the supply chain.” Whatever that means.

Fishing: Prize Catch Monopoly

Guaranteed to be every bit as exciting as Monopoly: Linoleum Edition.

Grateful Dead-opoly

Another unofficial variant that’s a must-have for all twelve people who own it.

Monopoly: BBK Clinical Research & Development Edition

Made as a novelty item given out to attendees at the Drug Information Association conference, this one is (thankfully) rather tongue-in-cheek, celebrating the building of empires via Big Pharma. Of course, only those who actually build such pharmaceutical empires are actually playing it, so I guess it’s something they play when they’re tired of counting their piles of cash.

Sephora Monopoly

See last entry. Replace “pharmaceutical” references with “cosmetics.”

Sun-Maid Monopoly

This “major consumer brand” variant thing is getting out of hand…

General Mills Monopoly

Oh, come on. Is no childhood favorite sacred? Apparently not, since the game pieces are a who’s who list of GM characters: Hamburger Helper’s “Helping Hand,” Betty Crocker spoon, the Trix rabbit, Lucky the Leprecheun, the Green Giant, the Pillsbury Doughboy, and more.

Brew-opoly

You’re not allowed to play it unless you have a gut.

Ultraman Monopoly

Because no list is complete without a healthy dose of kitschy Japanese culture!

Thunderbirds Monopoly

Winner of the “Most Unnecessary Monopoly of All Time” award.

Medical Monopoly

The most appalling entry on this list. But don’t write angry letters to Parker Bros. — this is another unsanctioned knock-off. You play against one to three friends, trying to fill your own hospital with patients. The player who fills their hospital first wins. Just like in real life!

Dachsund-opoly

It just writes its own punchline, doesn’t it?

For the most part, I enjoy kickin’ it nostalgic when it comes to my boardgame days, and I partook in more than my fair share of old school geeky gaming in my day. Oh, who am I kidding? I’m one of those people. I still enjoy geek boardgames today.

Here’s a short list of games worth a second look for any fellow board gamer, or any geek looking for an old school alternative to high tech fun.

Risk
This 50s classic has encouraged children and adults for decades to develop unhealthy competitive streaks and, if unsuccessful in play, inferiority complexes. A game of global domination, Risk is a nerd’s true delight – but it’s taken a distinctly geek turn with some of its many spin-offs, including the futuristic Risk 2210 A.D., Risk: Star Wars, and Risk: The Lord of the Rings. The Lord of the Rings version even spawned an expansion set and and a game just for the Siege of Minas Tirith. What’s more, Sean Astin and other actors and crew of the film trilogy played Risk between takes. It may be a perfect marriage, but I don’t think I’d want to go a few rounds with Tom Bombadil.

Solarquest
This was Space Camp‘s answer to boardgames (ignoring the fact that Space Camp came out a year after the game). For a girl who always wanted to be an astronaut, Solarquest, like Monopoly set in space, was a dream come true. Unfortunately because this game truly was so much like Monopoly – only involving buying celestial bodies instead of mundane property – there’s not a lot more to say about it. Just one more detail that is, in fact, totally epic: going bankrupt was only one way to lose. Another? Getting blown to smithereens in a laser battle. Oh, yeah, it’s on.

The Princess Bride: Storming the Castle
A relatively new offering (2008), this game disappoints only in that it’s not based solely around the Sicilian battle of wits. You can, however, perform dashing deeds of heroism battling mano a mano with opponents and surmounting obstacles between you and Humperdink’s castle where, despite the fact that she’s really just a stuck up priss, your beloved Buttercup awaits you. It features all the settings we’ve come to know and love – like the Fire Swamp and the Cliffs of Insanity. All it’s missing is Mandy Patinkin sitting across the table with rapier ready to slice a face or two if he loses. Don’t put it past him.

RoboRally
It feels like cheating including this game here, because the losing mechanism is yet again laser beams. But really, is there such thing as too much laser action? And it was created by the man who developed Magic: The Gathering, which gives it geek cred even if you shelf it. In a nutshell, you play a robot who has to maneuver his way through various arenas filled with traps and obstacles, which you overcome by arranging the robot’s progress along the board according to a series of action cards that dictate how you should move, turn, etc. your piece. So depending on the cards you’re given, and the obstacles you face, you have to out-plan the arena’s maze and employ some serious strategy to survive. A boardgame that makes you really think. That’s geeky, alright.

Check out more boardgame goodness:
LEGO + board games = geeky family fun, Cupcakes of Catan , Get fat on strategy with chocolate chess

Ever heard of the German board game Settlers of Catan? You know, the game that Wired called the “Monopoly killer,” aka the most perfect board game of all time?

It’s a fiendishly clever, deceptively simple game based around the idea of trading natural resources. Hexagonal cardboard tiles are used instead of one set board, so the playing surface changes every time you play. The play area in question is an island, where the story goes that you and your opponents are basically trying to take over, owning more territory, resources, and property than anyone else. The object is to score points, which are based on the number of resources you own and the colonies you have established (along with a few random points that come from Catan’s version of “Chance” and “Park Place” cards).

Even if you’ve never heard of the game or any of of its many expansion packs, take my word for it that it’s wildly popular, spawning an entire subculture of enthusiasts and players’ clubs. And like all good subcultures, it’s been remade in a new creative medium. In this case, that medium is cupcakes. And cupcake gaming = pure genius.

Cupcakes of Catan is a fully playable version of the game made with seventy-three cupcakes by Flickr user “QuintanaRoo.” As you can see in the photo above, the game pieces, island tiles, settler buildings, roads — everything but the cards — is made out of cupcakes and other sweet treats. It looks fun and delicious.

I just hope the winner gets to eat the spoils.

Question: What do you get when you combine LEGO with a board game? Answer: Something impossibly awesome. Come on — you put those two things together, and I’m already in.

The world of LEGO just keeps getting bigger, and now, LEGO Games have arrived in the United States. Our friends in Europe have been enjoying these unique sets for a while now, but at last they’ve landed in America.

These clever game sets combine everything that’s great about board games with the wonders of LEGO Bricks. The result is a sort of hybrid game with rules and objectives just like a regular board game, only the board and all of the parts are made of LEGO pieces. There are even multiple sets of rules that let you play your game in different ways. (What a cool job it would be to design these games.)

Right now there are five LEGO Games available, though more are expected to follow. (Great Britain currently has 14.) Rumor has it there’s even a “Harry Potter Hogwarts” game on the way.

Each game set comes with specially-designed LEGO Dice that you build yourself. The gameplay varies from set to set, but is available for upwards of 4 to 8 players, and can last anywhere from 15 minutes to a full hour.

My favorite is Creationary, a game in which you’re challenged to build something in one of four categories — vehicles, buildings, nature, or things — and all of the other players have to guess what you’re building. Creationary also happens to be the most expensive one of the lot, at $34.99, though most of the games are priced under $20.

I wonder how many more kids would have come to chess club at school if they’d been able to eat the pieces at the end of the game?

Actually, scratch that — they’d probably just eat the pieces mid-game.

Here are some chocolate chess pieces which come in a tube that transforms into the board itself. Apparently inspired by folklore, when a Croatian and Italian king play chess with prizes of islands off the Croatian coast, this is a set you can only play one game with before having to buy another one. Best not to play it at the height of summer either.

Designed by Key Design, I’m not sure whether this is just a concept or whether you can get hold of sets. Might be too much of a temptation anyway.