PC CD-ROM minimum sys- tem requirements: Pentium 100mhz; 16MB RAM; 30MB hard disk space; Windows 95; Quad speed CD-ROM drive; SVGA £34.99
The world has gone well and truly mad - football mad. Even fans of the board game Monopoly can get in on the atmosphere with this latest Monopoly conversion from Hasbro Interactive.
Those who love to cheat will be disappointed to find the game itself always plays banker. But if you don't like having to count money for half the game, then that's a good thing. A click of the mouse rolls your dice and the game moves your piece to its designated spot on the board. And your houses (or football terraces as they are here) don't fall all over the place. Gone are the top hat and steam iron, in favour of footballers in different coloured kits. Community Chest and Chance cards are replaced by Home and Away cards. There is no Trafalgar Square or Mayfair to own either. Instead you buy teams. The 22 countries listed are the top 22 ranked teams in the world. When you land on one of them, a video sequence is played to give you a flavour of the country. This is usually a picture of a football ground with the national flag and is accompanied with traditional music. Thankfully, you can turn this option off. In fact you can turn all the fancy animations off and return to a fairly normal game of Monopoly if you like. If you play by the World Cup rules, a couple of things can happen every time you pass Go. At random, you can either get involved in a penalty shootout or have the game play two teams against each other, in which case the winner gets promoted.
In the penalty shootout you get to take two penalties at goal. If you score twice you get to throw three dice, from which you pick your favourite two, until you pass Go again. If you score one, nothing happens and if you fail to score you miss a turn.
If you like Monopoly and are a football fan as well, this might be your kind of thing. But real Monopoly fans or indeed real football fans might have better things to be doing.
Graphics: 70%, Sound: 67%, Gameplay: 82%