There’s no better way to ruin a nice day at a cottage than sitting down with your family and drinking a bunch of wine over a game of Monopoly. Even after enjoying each other’s company all morning and afternoon—firing custom-made assault rifles and going fishing—a competitive game filled with annoying alliances and hazy house rules is likely to spiral out into terrible fights that leave everyone upset.
Ignoring its source material’s appropriately negative depiction of Monopoly entirely, we’ve now been given Monopoly: The Sopranos. A game which, at long last, allows players to pretend they’re the vicious, emotionally damaged boss of a New Jersey criminal empire.
Sopranos Monopoly joins other “well, why not?” versions of the classic board game that include, to date, Breaking Bad Monopoly, Monopoly For Millennials, Monopoly for Queen fans, Ms. Monopoly, and the painfully misguided Monopoly: Socialism. The competing gang aspect of The Sopranos at least makes it a little more appropriate than some of these versions, though the way the theme shakes out in practice is still pretty ridiculous.
The store page’s description promises that players of the game will have the ability to “buy, sell, and trade popular locations like Tony Soprano’s House and Satriale’s Pork Store, before wheeling and dealing at The Bada Bing!” Rather than focus on the multi-generational nightmares involved with emerging as the blood-soaked champion of this domain, the Monopoly variant keeps things cute with chance cards renamed to read “AYY!” and Community Chest cards that say “OHH!”
Aside from a few other themed additions, like the second-place beauty prize card being subtitled, “Go ahead, make your joke,” (oddly missing Tony’s follow-up: “A German Shepherd’s shaved asshole won first prize”), there are playing pieces like a little duck, a Satriale’s pig, a therapy chair, the Stugots, and one of Bobby’s toy trains.
With all of these nods to the show in place, it’s up to players themselves to figure out if they can get the game to reach its complete level of authenticity. We recommend inviting an old friend with a severe gambling addiction over to play and sprinkling cheese under the shoes of another.
[via IndieWire]
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