A Get Out of Jail Free card is an element of the board game Monopoly. It has since become a popular metaphor for something that will get one out of an undesired situation without any repercussions. [1]
The original U.S. version of the board game Monopoly has two Get Out of Jail Free cards, with distinctive artwork. One, a "Community Chest" card, depicts a winged version of the game's mascot, Mr. Monopoly, in his tuxedo as he flies out of an open birdcage. The other, a "Chance" card, shows him booted out of a prison cell in a striped convict uniform. More modern versions of the game have more simply illustrated cards with a set of four jail bars, with the middle two bent outwards, implying a prison escape.
Players move around the Monopoly board according to dice throws. Most of the tiles players land on are properties that can be bought. There is also a tile, the Jail, that can hold players and cause them to lose their turn until certain conditions are met. They can end up in this space by landing on the "Go to Jail" tile, throwing three doubles in a row, or drawing a "Go to Jail" card from Community Chest or Chance. The Get Out of Jail Free card frees the player from jail to continue playing and progress around the board without paying a fee, then must be returned to the respective deck upon playing it.
As the card's text says, it can also be sold by the possessing player to another player for a price that is "agreeable by both".
Monopoly is a multiplayer economics-themed board game. In the game, players roll two dice to move around the game board, buying and trading properties and developing them with houses and hotels. Players collect rent from their opponents and aim to drive them into bankruptcy. Money can also be gained or lost through Chance and Community Chest cards and tax squares. Players receive a salary every time they pass "Go" and can end up in jail, from which they cannot move until they have met one of three conditions. House rules, hundreds of different editions, many spin-offs, and related media exist.
Pay Day is a board game originally made by Parker Brothers in 1974. It was invented by Paul J. Gruen of West Newbury, Massachusetts, United States, one of the era's top board game designers, and his brother-in-law Charles C. Bailey. It was Gruen's most successful game, outselling Monopoly in its first production year. Pay Day is currently marketed by Winning Moves Games USA.
Mr. Monopoly is the mascot of the board game of Monopoly. He is depicted as a portly old man with a moustache who wears a morning suit with a bowtie and top hat. In large parts of the world he is known, additionally or exclusively, as the Monopoly Man, "Rich Uncle" Pennybags, Milburn Pennybags, or the Monopoly Guy. He also appears in the related games Rich Uncle, Advance to Boardwalk, Free Parking, Don't Go to Jail, Monopoly City, Monopoly Junior, and Monopoly Deal.
In tabletop games and video games, game mechanics are the rules or ludemes that govern and guide the player's actions, as well as the game's response to them. A rule is an instruction on how to play, a ludeme is an element of play like the L-shaped move of the knight in chess. A game's mechanics thus effectively specify how the game will work for the people who play it.
SolarQuest is a space-age real estate trading board game published in 1985 and developed by Valen Brost, who conceived the idea in 1976. The game is patterned after Monopoly, but it replaces pewter tokens with rocket ships and hotels with metallic fuel stations. Players travel around the Sun acquiring monopolies of planets, moons, and man-made space structures. They seek to knock their opponents out of the game through bankruptcy, as well as optional laser blasts and dwindling fuel supplies.
The McDonald's Monopoly game is a sales promotion run by fast food restaurant chain McDonald's, with a theme based on the Hasbro board game Monopoly. The game first ran in the U.S. in 1987 and has since been used worldwide.
Rummy is a group of games related by the feature of matching cards of the same rank or sequence and same suit. The basic goal in any form of rummy is to build melds which can be either sets or runs and either be first to go out or to amass more points than the opposition.
Monopoly Junior is a simplified version of the board game Monopoly, designed for young children, which was originally released in 1990. It has a rectangular board that is smaller than the standard game and rather than using street names it is based on a city's amusements to make the game more child-friendly. There are many different models of the game.
Alhambra is a 2003 tile-based German-style board game designed by Dirk Henn. It was originally published in Germany by Queen Games in a language-interdependent version; an English-specific version was released in North America by the now-defunct Überplay. The game is a Muslim-themed update, set during the construction of the Alhambra palace in 14th century Granada, of the 1998 stock trading board game Stimmt So!, which in turn was an update of the 1992 mafia influence board game Al Capone; the original version was subsequently released as Alhambra: The Card Game. Upon its release, Alhambra won numerous awards, including the Spiel des Jahres award. Its success has led to the release of numerous expansion packs and spin-off games, and is becoming Queen Games' flagship franchise.
A scratchcard is a card designed for competitions, often made of thin cardstock or plastic to conceal PINs, where one or more areas contain concealed information which can be revealed by scratching off an opaque covering.
The board game Monopoly has its origin in the early 20th century. The earliest known version, known as The Landlord's Game, was designed by Elizabeth Magie and first patented in 1904, but existed as early as 1902. Magie, a follower of Henry George, originally intended The Landlord's Game to illustrate the economic consequences of Ricardo's Law of economic rent and the Georgist concepts of economic privilege and land value taxation. A series of board games was developed from 1906 through the 1930s that involved the buying and selling of land and the development of that land. By 1933, a board game already existed much like the modern version of Monopoly that has been sold by Parker Brothers and related companies through the rest of the 20th century, and into the 21st. Several people, mostly in the midwestern United States and near the East Coast of the United States, contributed to its design and evolution.
My Monopoly is a service offered to citizens of the United Kingdom by the company Hasbro. The service was designed to allow a user of the My Monopoly website to create a personalized Monopoly game set, which can then be ordered and made for that person. The service was developed by Monitor Media Ltd and introduced in 2002. There were two versions of My Monopoly: the Traditional version; and the Here and Now version, which was introduced in 2005 and discontinued in 2006.
Easy Money or The Game of Easy Money was a board game introduced by Milton Bradley Company in 1935. Like Monopoly, the game is based on The Landlord's Game in the movement of pieces around the board, the use of cards, properties that can be purchased, and houses that can be established on them.
Finance, or The Fascinating Game of Finance or Finance and Fortune, is a board game originally released in 1932. The game is based on The Landlord's Game in the movement of pieces around the board, the use of cards, properties that can be purchased, and houses that can be erected on them. The game also has railroads; however, these may not be purchased. The game is a predecessor to Monopoly.
Android is an adventure board game designed by Kevin Wilson and Dan Clark, published in 2008 by Fantasy Flight Games. Set in a dystopian future, where the Moon is colonized and androids and clones are real, players take on the roles of murder investigators, investigating a murder within the fictional cities of New Angeles and Heinlein, a colony on the Moon. Players attempt to gain Victory Points by solving the murder, solving the conspiracy, and/or resolving the investigators' personal issues. The player with the most Victory Points wins the game.
Monopoly: The Mega Edition is a special variant of the popular Hasbro board game Monopoly. The game was first published on May 22, 2006 by Winning Moves Games USA in the United States. A UK version was adapted on October 1, 2007.
Prisonball is played much like the original dodgeball game, except when a player is hit, they get put in "prison" behind the opposing team. To get out of prison, the player needs to receive a pass from a teammate while in the designated prison area. The way in which prisoners are released varies by region. "Prisoners" remain behind the opposing team until the game is over or they're released according to the current ruleset.
Family Game Night is an American television game show based on Hasbro's family of board games and EA's video game franchise of the same name. The show was hosted by Todd Newton. Burton Richardson was the announcer for the first two seasons; he was replaced by Stacey J. Aswad in the third season, and Andrew Kishino was hired for the fourth season. The 60-minute program debuted on October 10, 2010, on The Hub ; it was previewed on October 9, 2010, on its sister channel, TLC. Seasons 1 and 2 contained 26 and 30 episodes respectively. Seasons 3, 4 and 5 each contained 15 episodes. Season 2 premiered on Friday, September 2, 2011, with additional games being added. The games added to the second season included Cranium Brain Breaks, Green Scream, Ratuki Go-Round, Simon Flash, Operation Sam Dunk, Trouble Pop Quiz, and Spelling Bee. However games from the previous season were still kept.
Monopoly Millionaires' Club is an American lottery game show that debuted in syndication on March 28, 2015. Hosted by stand-up comedian/actor Billy Gardell, best known for his role as Chicago police officer Mike Biggs on the sitcom Mike & Molly, it was initially based on an unsuccessful drawing game of the same name that was coordinated by the Multi-State Lottery Association (MUSL), using the Monopoly board game brand under license from Hasbro. The lottery game returned, in scratch-off form, in the spring of 2015.
Faeria is a digital collectible card and turn-based strategy game that takes place on a dynamic playing board set in a fantasy universe. The game was developed by Abrakam, and released for desktop platforms in 2017, for Xbox One and Nintendo Switch in August 2020 and for PlayStation 4 in November 2020. The game was well received by critics, holding a score of 80/100 on reviews aggregation website Metacritic.