Did you see that cool Zelda Monopoly board. Verily it looked pretty goddamn sweet — as good an excuse as any to endure the relationship destroying experience that is a game of Monopoly. It is all set to be released in Australia with one caveat: it is exclusive to EB Games. You will not be able to buy The Legend of Zelda Monopoly board at any other retailer in Australia.
It’s an entirely different deal to the one GameStop has in the US. In the US GameStop have an exclusive, in terms of having some extra in-the-box perks (think exclusive DLC for board games) but the Australian exclusive is an all-the-way exclusive. We’ve confirmed with EB Games that no other local retailer will be stocking the game. You’ll be able to purchase it overseas if you’d prefer, but if you want to walk into a store and pick up the game, it’s EB Games or bust.
The box is set for release this December and will cost $78. That’s almost double the US$40 that our American cousins will be paying at Gamestop.
Pretty expensive but, then again, that’s what we tend to pay for board games in Australia.
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42 responses to “EB Games Exclusively Selling The Zelda Monopoly Board In Australia”
Board games are really expensive here. Been looking at Dr Who Risk and TWD Risk, but the prices are crazy.
If you have friends who want the games too, order multiple from Amazon. You might pay $40 in shipping, but split between 2 or 3 people is not much, and still worth buying from overseas.
I do the same thing with books. 1 D&D book here: $50, in the US, $20. Order 10 of them, pay $50 for shipping, still less than half price.
If I can get it for $50 shipped from the UK or something, I might pick it up, but I ain’t paying more than $50.
$78, I blow my nose at you.
Serious question…..
Does anyone buy special edition monopoly versions to actually play?
I mean, yeah, some are cool, I even got the Star Wars version when I was much younger. But really, if I want to play a fun game with a group of people, I can think of many games which are more fun than Monopoly.
I dunno, I guess I just can’t say I know a single person who actually is a fan of Monopoly.
I love Zelda, but if a company released a Zelda themed circumcision kit, that doesn’t mean I would buy it….
I bought a Warcraft one, but only because I didn’t already have a Monopoly board and figured if I was going to get one it may as well have a theme I like.
I hate the start of monopoly. It’s tedious and boring. The end game where you start negotiating for properties gets really interesting though.
I loathe Monopoly. It’s a game whose sole intent is to remove other players from the game, leaving them sitting around twiddling their thumbs for potentially hours while the remaining players finish the game.
A good competitive game keeps all players in until the very end and then chooses a winner based on score. These sorts of games deserve so much more attention than Monopoly.
In saying that though, I’ll be picking up a copy of this for my partner, as he loves Zelda. So yeah, our copy will be for the collection only, not to actually play.
Does your partner like Monopoly?
[Again, serious question, I am genuinely curious 🙂 ]
Hence why I added the last line in my comment about the circumcision kit…. If the end product is something you wouldn’t get on it’s own, why does adding a Zelda coat of paint on top make it something you want?
That’s how the marketing departments make their living right? Selling products to people who ordinarily wouldn’t buy these products?
Again, if your partner likes Monopoly, awesome! But if not, wouldn’t there be something more related to something he actually likes, rather than just in labelling?
EDIT: Just realised that above is nothing but a whole heap of questions, haha. Sorry for that. I guess I’m just trying to put another bit of perspective on this product, as I really don’t like the type of marketing strategy used here, which is effectively peddling stuff to people to get them to buy something they probably wouldn’t otherwise….
It’s kind of a personal question. What you may see as a different paint of coat, might actually entirely change the game for some people. For some people context is hugely important, for some it’s logistics, for some it’s content etc. How much something is actually affected by these invisible constructs is subjective and individual. It’s why people are always arguing about how much certain choices in Mass Effect or the Walking Dead matter. Some want to be able quantify choices and if they can’t then they claim the game is lacking, certain choices may only have emotional or moral repercussions which some people call meaningful and others don’t. While i can’t see myself buying such a thing unless the game were actually altered in some way but i know that my partner loves Zelda and the meaning of the product for her as an individual is vastly different from mine and yours because she appreciates visual design/art as well as the sentimentality/nostalgia inherent and that’s clearly something of value in the product.
No that’s fair enough. That’s exactly why I was asking that question.
The point being, can a simply objective change [a coat of paint], make you purchase a product which functionally you wouldn’t otherwise.
It seems that the answer is, in fact, ‘yes’ for some people.
I think Monopoly is a particularly good example, as it’s something which A) most people have at least ONE copy of anyway, and B) I don’t actually know anyone who actually thinks Monopoly is that great of a game :p
My partner doesn’t like Monopoly, no.
Yeah, I don’t think I’d ever buy a circumcision kit, no matter how it was themed. I have ethical objections to that though, so it’s probably not the most comparable product. I’ll offer an alternative. Neither myself or my partner drink alcohol, and haven’t done so for a few years. But if a company was to produce a limited edition bottle of alcohol that paid homage to one of my favourite games or series, I’d probably still buy it. Why? Not really sure. I guess I like collecting things that look nice.
I could also ask why people bother buying themed versions of anything, even if they’ll use it. If you like Monopoly, buy a normal game of Monopoly and save yourself $50. Sometimes we buy things just because.
I get where you’re coming from though. Fortunately I’m not having to choose this over something he’d actually use and enjoy. 🙂
And you know what? After typing all that out I think, for the first time in all internet history, I’ll concede and say “yeah, you’re right.” Waste of money and I think I’d be better off getting him something else 🙂
Thanks for responding honestly 🙂
I’m just a curious guy, so I guess I like to understand peoples thought processes, no matter what they might be, heh.
That’s one thing a bout internet discussions, though; no matter what someone says, there’s always 10x more context, justification and thought inside the person’s head that wasn’t said in what they wrote.
Competitive games can have player elimination.
One of the biggest issues people have with Monopoly is that they play it wrong. The game simply should not take hours to play. So many people add a whole bunch of house rules into the mix that try to circumvent the player elimination which only serves to make the game go longer.
Putting money on Free Parking means that money isn’t being removed from the economy. The whole point is so that everyone but one player goes broke, so this makes the game worse.
Going once around the board before you can but? I still don’t understand the point of this rule.
People also ignore a rule that if someone doesn’t buy the property that they land on, an auction starts. This means all of the properties get sold much faster.
Monopoly is a better game than people give it credit for but it’s still a shitty roll and move game.
If you want to barter with people, get Settlers of Catan. If you want to try the other aspects, get Power Grid. If you want to have fun in a whole host of other ways, I have a whole closet full of board games that I can happily recommend.
While everything you said before this is absolutely 100% true, this is the only thing which needs to be said when people talk about Monopoly :p
Monopoly is an awesome game, I have about 5 or 6 different editions.
They all get played at least once a year, but my friends and I are all pretty big board gamers as well as video gamers, so I guess it just depends on your interests really.
I asked this last time. 🙂
I hate Monopoly. If I had to get a themed game, I’d rather buy Star Trek Settlers of Catan, especially if I can get Jeri Ryan to play with me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YKFedT30MU
Star Wars Risk is an excellent example of board-game/franchise tie-ins done right.
Battlestar Galactica is probably the ur-example.
It’s a hidden role game where players are crew of the Battlestar Galactica. You’re working together to keep the ship afloat while things just generally go awry. On top of that, some of the players are secretly cylons and are trying to contribute to make things go even further awry.
I’ve never seen the show and the game is still fantastic.
Unfortunately, it takes about two hours to play and the rulebook is simply arcane. Still, it’s an excuse to yell accusations at your friends and call them fracking toasters. What better way to waste an afternoon?
Lord of the Rings Risk is also brilliant. Middle Earth makes a fantastic map and the moving of The Ring from The Shire to Mordor adds a relevant timing mechanism.
man that looks sweet.
The art sitting in the middle of the board is a but uninspired. They could have had a hundred more beautiful illustrations in there! Eh well
Gotta bank on that OoT nostalgia, mediocre publicity art included!
I pretty much thought the same thing
Yeah, a bit over that image, it’s been overused.
More importantly, is anyone going to be selling the Pokemon Monopoly locally?
You might even say that EB Games has a local monopoly on Zelda Monopoly…
http://goo.gl/mr9uKU
I was gonna say that!
Finally after all these comments some one else noticed.
What is the currency? If its Rupees then I’m in.
Looks like it (look at the spaces on the board)
How do they fit all the rupees in the box? They must be really small….
The Hylian government switched to paper currency after it was discovered you could smash your own pots for free rupees, leave the room and re-enter it again for more free rupees.
http://i.imgur.com/67l1mYT.gif
You can buy a bigger wallet for just 100 rupee’s 😉
Exclusive, they said. Monopoly, they said. Hah, sir. I say to you, Hah!
http://www.dungeoncrawl.com.au/p-6465-the-legend-of-zelda-collectors-edition-monopoly-board-games.aspx
They actually are the exclusive dealers as dungeoncrawl just grey imports it.
That ‘Free Parking’ square absolutely killed it for me. Why bother setting the game in a different world if you’re just going to break atmosphere with staple art?
Same with the Go To Jail IMO
That’s really disappointing 🙁 Surely it could have been a Lon Lon Ranch stable or something? And the “Go To Jail” could have been a Gerudo guard? This is straight off the top of my head – surely the designers could have come up with something better in the hundreds of man hours spent creating this?
The whole thing looks super lazy. The Link on the board is just the old Ocarina of Time design which has been around for a good 15 or so years. They could have at least designed a new board with care instead of just printing existing assets.
keep a look out, it wont be exclusive
yay no market competition meaning EB can charge whatever they like and theres no alternative… nvm.