The Escondido Game (1987)

Still drinking our mead at Meadiocrity (see last post), they had a box that said "The Escondido Game" and was clearly a Monopoly knock-off, right down to the little metal tokens.  But it was not made by the big Opoly company that does these for almost every city and franchise (by the way, they're a local company in Carlsbad).  It was published in 1987 by the Higgins Group.  At the time (I didn't bring my reading glasses), I had no idea it was that old.  Must be really hard to find.  It was created for the 100th anniversary of the incorporation of the city.

It was a standard Opoly game full of local names and businesses that nobody more than 100 miles away would understand.  It was mostly black-and-white and felt fairly low-budget.  But that's fine.  And as soon as I typed that, I remembered it's 37 years old.  1987 is when I moved to California after 4 semesters at SUNY Stony Brook ... memory lane.

We took some trips around the board and hit the road.  It did not have the two decks of actions cards (Chance and Community Chest), just one deck called Opportunity, with about the same cards.  One interesting card was very verbose, but the bottom line was that it would buy a property for you at no cost on some future turn, opening a can of worms: do you have to land on a buyable square first, or can you just pick one?  Can you steal from another player?  We like when rules seem simple but have different meanings to different players.