Resident Evil Monopoly

introduction
This is the story of how an idea developed into a full flown project, for that project to come to an abrupt end, and then for it to be re-ignited.

This is an editorial of the process that I went through, and the many design stages that eventually came down to the final board that now sits proudly in my home.

dark beginnings

Unsurprisingly the idea that perhaps I should create a Resident Evil themed monopoly board came to me whilst playing the game back in 2005. A glancing thought, nothing really materialized until a trip to America that year. A look round Toys R Us in Times Square, NY reveals the extent of the Monopoly franchise.

In Britain we had seen our fair share of ‘Poly spin offs. Each major city received the board game treatment as well some of our famous universities and football teams. A few of the imported editions also made their way to our shores including various Star Wars, Lord of the Rings and Hard Rock Café editions. This however was a tiny comparison of what Monopoly had become in America. Under the oddly named USAopoly franchise, licences were brought and sold so that any name became new board designs.

A look into the appropriate section at Toys R Us revealed the true extent of this mass marketing. The usual suspects littered the Monopoly brand; Spiderman, Batman, New York Yankees, but most intriguing was the “US Army edition” and the “surfing” edition. Such random themes that seemingly did not work. This was epitomised in later years by the Nintendo edition. Quite how you can place houses and hotels on Waluigi is beyond me.

Nonetheless, it suddenly dawned on me that my favourite franchise in computer games which boasts numerous locations that would actually merit placing properties on them.

One night of excited thinking about what locations could be used, and the realisation that whilst this could be possible, huge obstacles were inevitably in my way...

Read the rest at Project Umbrella.