1660: Stop Wasting Cool Licenses on Monopoly

Hey! Listen! There’s a Legend of Zelda board game coming! Awesome! Take a look!

…Oh. Monopoly. Again. Great.

Yes, indeed: the latest in a long-line of quick-and-easy cash grab Monopoly sets is one based on Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda series, a franchise that has been running almost since the dawn of gaming, and one which has consistently provided gamers with some of the most enchanting interactive adventures of all time, blending childlike wonderment with epic heroic fantasy.

The Legend of Zelda, meanwhile, has not been particularly known over the years for its protagonist Link’s desire to build up a sizeable portfolio of property, nor has Hyrule society ever been particularly dependent on capitalism. Link, more often than not, does good deeds out of a sense of altruism, or occasionally for the promise of “something good” (inevitably in bold print) — said “something good” is rarely financial reward, with questgivers instead tending to give him something of much more practical use.

I’m a bit annoyed about this. I’m not a particularly huge Zelda fan myself, but this is, without a doubt, a colossal waste of an awesome license. Monopoly is a terrible board game to shoehorn the Zelda license into. It’s a terrible game in its own right, too, but I’m aware some people still like it, so I’m not going to push that angle too far — besides, my own personal dislike of Monopoly isn’t why I’m frustrated to see Zelda squandered like this.

No, instead I find myself wishing for a more appropriate use of the license. It doesn’t have to be an original board game in its own right — though that would be cool: spectacular Polish RPG series The Witcher is soon to get its own cool-looking original board game, so it’s not without precedent either — but surely, surely there are better ways that Zelda could be adapted for tabletop play?

Here’s just a few suggestions:

• The Legend of Zelda: Carcassonne — Standard Carcassonne, except the tiles are all made up of actual tilesets from past Zelda games — A Link to the Past’s 16-bit top-down graphics would be ideal for this. Meeples could be replaced by the different, distinctive races of creatures you come across in a typical Zelda game — one player could have a set of Gorons, while another could have Zoras, another still could have the Kokiri, and so on.
• The Legend of Zelda: Catan — Much like Carcassonne, the bare minimum you need to do to make a convincing Zelda Catan set would be to redo the tile artwork in an authentically Zelda-esque fashion. You could incorporate some of the new rules and tweaks from things like Star Trek Catan — variable player powers is neat, for example — and Catan’s numerous expansions for different scenarios.
• The Legend of Zelda: Talisman — Talisman is, while flawed as a game, a decent depiction of an epic quest to achieve something. Reskinning this would be a more appropriate use of the license than Monopoly.
• D&D Adventures: The Legend of Zelda — The dungeon-crawling co-op adventure games carrying the D&D brand are ripe for adaptation with Zelda artwork, enemies and items. You could even do a “Four Swords” thing, with each player having a differently coloured Link to control.
• Arkham/Eldritch Horror: The Legend of Zelda — Okay, stretching things a bit here in terms of theme, but the mechanics of Arkham and Eldritch Horror are ripe for adaptation into a Zelda-style epic quest. There’s exploration, treasures, character progression, battles, boss fights… everything a good Zelda game would need.

And this is just off the top of my head. All of the above would need very little adaptation in order to create a more convincing tabletop Zelda experience than Monopoly ever will. Come, on, Zelda Monopoly even still has “salaries”, “Go To Jail” and “Free Parking”, the latter of which in particular is completely incongruous with the setting.

So, this is pissing in the wind, I know, but please, please, license holders: when considering whether or not to license your awesome property for tabletop adaptation, please look a little further than Monopoly. It may be one of the most well-known games in the world, but there are hundreds, thousands of other, far better board and card games out there, most of which would be much better-suited for adaptations of this kind.