Monopoly is an old friend to me. I can't remember the first time I played, not like Super Mario...another story though. Monopoly stayed true when other board games failed. The pace of the game is a little like real time strategy, it starts so slow at first that you worry that the game is boring but after earning a few properties you begin to get a picture of what you want to do.

After playing about 10 games of Monopoly I really understood the game, not as much as the international champion players which I have no evidence that they exist except for the fact that I assume a game like this could sustain a worldwide competitive championship. Monopoly is at its best when the greed starts. I swear the greed is their right from when you are dished that 1050$ is that what were given?

2x $500

2x $100

2x $50

6x $20

5x $10

5x $5

5x $1

Thats $1500, my bad.

Anyway, you have a nice stack of cash right in front of you now. Sometimes I keep the money in a disorganised pile with different bills sticking out everywhere. Other times I put them at the edge of board neatly spaced tucked evenly. Either way I go I want more, going around the board will make you money but you always want to stay ahead of your opponents who will buy up properties and charge you for staying their.

I get into a mild panic when I see the properties vanish, I want them all. Building an empire of hotels and pushing out the competition until I have a Monopoly.

Its a great game. Their are soo many versions of it! I remember they came out with one for my hometown, it was so funny. I played it a couple times at my friends place, we had a real trip buying properties in the town we lived. Its really amazing how far reaching the game Monopoly is. Last year I seen Nintendo Monopoly, that looked cool. So now its the 75th anniversary of Monopoly and they have made a video game out of it. I dont think that I will play it though. Video Game board games are so corny. This one looks like no exception. Its got that start and stop motion because of all the dull animations that need to load for every action.The characters have about 5 or 6 audio lines that the programmers thought would be ok? Can you imagine playing with somebody that was like these shmucks in the game, they would be like repeating themselves everytime you go to jail or something. "DO NOT PASS GO!" and then laugh. ugh,

I dont get it why games can't have a constantly moving soundtrack or like 100 dialog possibilities for the characters. Like in Warcraft when you click on someone and they keep on saying things; it's not like we don't have the space in modern games to be able to have characters to say 100 things and man I could come up with 100 things to say, they all don't have to be great thats not the point, the point is to offer something fresh everytime. Y'know what? They should do that with movies, theirs always alternate takes right? Most of the time the director can't even decide which take is the best so he has to settle on one, well he probably decides based upon the flow of the story and stuff. Anyway instead of having an alternate take reel why not have the movie so that it plays a random take in the movie so that you would never really know what to expect it would be cool. They could have the final version where the producer had it all laid out to, why not.

So Monopoly is back hey, I don't own a board right, except the McDonalds board. Man Im such a sucker for McDonalds Monopoly, It's just and excuse to eat tasty garbage. I mean really what am I going to win? Honestly I win a cheeseburger at most, the million dollars you would have a better chance winning the lottery. McDonalds has gone really downhill in the Monopoly department. They used to have a lot of cool prizes but now its like a Spa Package?! Ok you have a women demographic to go for to but really their are better choices than that. They also have the $50 gift certificate for McDonalds, that's so dumb. I eat here to get game pieces to do something else not come back and eat more, like yah ok I would use the gift certificate, who wouldn't? But I would rather have something cool like a new stereo or what about a cool trip to somewhere like Cambodia or Russia?

I dont think the video game industry will ever be able to make a cool board game to video game. It lacks so much of the asthetic crucial to a good game and really no developer is going to spend the monery making sure the game is done right. Parker Brothers could have put the money up come to think of it, why not? This is 2010 and video games are king, who plays board games anymore? This could have been their chance to shine, which they think will happen but it wont.

I knew the E3 event was soon but I was pleasantly surprised to catch the Nintendo conference live this morning of June 15 2010 at 9am Mountain time. Here are my thoughts of the press conference.

The Miyamoto entrance was very geeky, I know the nature of the video game industry is like this but I couldn't help rolling my eyes a little. Still it's good to see him alive and well. New Zelda? Looks interesting. I really enjoyed the Twilight princess and this looks to be a good one to. The only problem I had was the chose to introduce the game. It seemed like Miyamoto was having trouble navigating link and it made the controls look clunky, he handled the situation in stride though which helped. I hope the controls are as smooth as they were trying to reassure the audience of. After a couple minutes of play the controller lost functionality to the embarassment of Miyamoto and his interpretor. They claimed their was interference of some sort but I thought maybe the controllers batteries were dying, maybe I'm wrong.

Reggie, the spokesperson for Nintendo of America is a fairly good speaker maintaining a calm exterior and sticking to the program. The press conference moved foward at a good pace as they only had an hour to cover about 5 games.

Donkey Kong Country Returns is going to be a hit. It's good to see Nintendo revamp old ****c platformers like the New Super Mario brothers and now Donkey Kong. Any long time fans of the game are going to love these kind of titles.

I was never a huge fan of Kirby or Metroid so the teasers didn't really move me, however they both look like promising titles for longtime fans. The most surprising and exciting in my opinion was Golden Eye 007. I have waited for a long while for them to rerelease Golden Eye on the Wii but due to ownership rights and such we probably won't ever see it. A new Golden Eye game exclusively for Nintendo? Hell Yeah!

Nintendo showcased the new 3DS system that is a 3D handheld system without the need for 3D glasses. It was hard to understand the Japanese fellow though as his English was broken. I suspect that its a pride thing to showcase a game to an American audience even though your English suffers, thats fine. Nintendo also showcased a Mario sports game that looks to be a hit with party game fans. Well that's my summary of the Nintendo Press Conference June 15 2010.