Resort King 64 (or Life of Explosive Laughter 64: Aim to be Resort King! for the full translated name – I like to simplify names for a “what if it released over here” name). Is a digital board game that is heavily based on one of the worst board games of all time: Monopoly. However, while Monopoly is used as a basis, there is a lot more to this game and you can still win if you make terrible rolls.

The roll and move aspect is still here, unfortunately, with the main types of spaces to land on are shops and houses. Shops are fairly simple: if someone lands on them, they give you money, and they also generate their own income.

Houses aren’t rented out like in Monopoly, so people landing on your houses don’t lose any money. Instead, you need to buy two spaces next to each other and merge them (which demolishes the houses) and the next time you land on them, you can build a hotel. However, as other players can to a “forced takeover” for 3x the original price, you’ll often find that a merged space is no longer yours by the time you next get to it.

There are also multiple kinds of random events. There are space on the board where you draw an event card. Right after I got my first property, I got one that forced me to sell a property. There are ones like “it’s your birthday, get money form other players” and one where a nuke going off nearby forced everyone to lower prices to attract customers.

Every few turns are also other events (like natural disasters) that impact the pricing of various things or change taxes, and if you have a shop of hotel, random events can happen that can lead to good or bad outcomes.

One thing that did impress me was how the CPU players were implemented. The CPU character list is separate from the player one, and they all have their own style of dialogue and will comment on events throughout the game. It’s a simple thing that massively improves playing against CPU players. This is something more digital board games should do.

One big aspect of the game is stocks. You can invest in other players, which increases your capital if they own more stuff. The game shows you how much money you have on hand, plus your total assets. The goal of the game is to reach a certain amount of money, which triggers the end of the game when they reach the bank. I invested in the right person early on and managed to win the game, despite having a single shop and no other properties.

Resort King still isn’t a good game, but it’s a significant improvement over Monopoly. There are also multiple boards (some with unique spaces) and a tournament to work though, so there is variation between games.

Fine

Remake or Remaster?

This is more of a curiosity.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to play Resort King 64