Remember Monopoly? Yeah, I thought so.

Because I have the dorkiest obsessions, naturally, I'm getting myself addicted again to Monopoly.

I first encountered this board game in Archie Comics (yeah I once read Archie, another dorky admission) with a strip showing Moose buying Marvin Gardens. I wondered what it was. Getting answers from rich friends (haha) or classmates who've had the chance to play the game with relatives from Manila, I found out that it is basically the came where Millionaire's Game, the board game I'm more familiar with, was loosely based.

We have our own set at home, thanks to a rich classmate (thanks Angelina!) who gave it to me in a school Christmas "exchange gifts" activity. My family, both immediate and extended, loved playing the game, painstakingly managing the correct denominations of paper money, arranging the title deed cards in the correct color order, shuffling the chance and community chest cards to avoid repetitions, and forcing the toddler/pre-school kids around to spit out the houses and hotels they've mistaken as candies.

Night after night these days I have been sleeping beyond 12mn because of Monopoly. No one wants to play the game anymore, but good thing we have our AI friends (also knows as COMP or CPU). Everynight (and day, right before my turn in the banyo) I buy properties on Monoply Nintendo DS. (The game pack comes with 3 other games but... yeah I don't even know what they are).

Playing it on DS is different of course. Especially when you feel the weirdness of dealing, trading and bidding against pre-programmed non-human, imaginary players. Also, the taunting is notably absent. And there's no fun in jubilating after you've forced all your opponents to bankruptcy by building hotels on the boards premium blue spaces.

I wonder when I'll be able to paly real-life Monopoly again, with human players haha. That should be fun. Especially with new editions like The Simpsons Monopoly or Coca Cola Classic Ads Monopoly. Last year, I saw a new Monopoly set at Toy Kingdom The Block with no paper money. Instead, the players can have plastic VISA cards and the banker need not have money-skills for all he needs to do is swipe the cards in the terminal and input the amount to be deducted or credited.

But right now, the Monopoly set I'm lusting after is this one: