Designer: Rob Daviau
Publisher: Hasbro, Imagination Games, Parker Brothers
Tropical Tycoon is a modified version of Monopoly that incorporates new rules, new pieces, and new winning conditions. It uses a DVD (required) to generate random events.
New additions include:
Players have Jobs that give individual advantages.
In addition to beach houses (houses) and resorts (hotels), properties can be developed with Casinos, Parks, Restaurants, and Piers. The rent for the Casino is pure luck, but sometimes the owner has to pay out to the visitor. Parks don't garner much rent, and what rent they gather is based on the weather, which can change with every Chance or Community Chest event (the Park's main benefit is its worth in Fortune Tokens at game end: A Park on Gentle Sands is the equivalent of four million dollars cash at the end of the game). Piers' rent depends not only on the weather, but also the presence or absence of a cruise ship, which is also affected by the card events. Finally, Restaurants' rent is dependent upon the neighboring property improvements. There are very few of these developments, though, so the competition for them can be fierce!
Although the basic board layout is the same as a standard Monopoly board, there are no Chance and Community Chest cards; when a player lands on one of those two spots, the DVD determines what happens.
One of the dice has a TV symbol in place of the 1-pip; when the TV is rolled, a News Broadcast is played on the DVD, which triggers a random event (much like Chance or Community Chest).
Players collect Fortune Tokens (and earn them at the end of the game through their cash and property holdings). Play ends when one player goes bankrupt (or, alternately, whenever the players decide to stop). The player with the most Fortune Tokens at the end of the game wins.