IRELAND’S MONOPOLY board is being significantly revamped to include debit cards and multi-million property price tags.
Ordinance Survey Ireland also played a role in the new version, by revealing that the ‘GO’ spot on the Irish monopoly board could be occupied by the RDS in Dublin.
The game’s producer Hasbro Ireland teamed up with the OSI to identify what landmark would occupy the space between Shrewsbury Road and Rathfarnham.
The OSI’s Martin Creaton says that the mapping agency wanted to help Hasbro pick a site that was “as iconic as the game itself”. “The RDS is one of Dublin’s most well-known landmark venues and it’s fitting that it was chosen as the location of ‘GO’,” he explained.
Changed line-up
The new version of the Irish board has undergone a number of significant changes, including electronic banking. Instead of swapping colourful Monopoly notes, players ‘store’ their earnings on a debit card which can be swiped on the game’s battery-powered unit to pay rents or trade properties.
Those familiar with the traditional Irish board will notice that Crumlin and Kimmage (the two brown properties on the older boards) have been replaced with Rathfarnham and Raheny, while the Dundrum Shopping Centre and the Convention Centre are making their first appearances on the board.
Other new additions include Croke Park, the Gaiety Theatre, the Luas and the IFSC. Shannon Airport, previously the only non-Dublin property on the board, has been dropped in favour of the Dart.
Another major change is the price hike – instead of denominations in tens and hundreds, the prices listed on this electronic version range in the hundreds of thousands and millions.
Here’s a list of the properties which made it into the new addition:
The game comes with batteries and retails for around €26.99. Monpoly was invented over 70 years ago and an Irish edition first emerged in the 1970s.
Hasbro Ireland’s Anne Dermody told TheJournal.ie that although there will always be the traditional version of the board, the new edition is aimed at bringing the game “more in line with current times”.
The values of the properties have to be relative on the board, according to Dermody. “We do try to make some attempt to make them accurate, but we did feel that millions – even with today’s property price falls – were relevant for now”.
Dermody said that the board is traditionally set in a capital city and now that shopping centres have become much more the norm today and should make an appearance on the Dublin board, as should Croke Park and the Phoenix Park.
“We can’t put everything on it, but we try as best we can to pick the locations and icons that people will see as they go through the city,” she added.
Monopoly is one of the games produced by Hasbro Ireland at its Waterford plant and around 2.7 million sets of the game are produced there annually.
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