Monopoly Star Wars from 1997 joins two licences that share nothing at first glance: the classic board game about buying up property and a film trilogy. Development was handled by the Canadian studio Artech Digital Entertainment, and the catalogue places it in the line of digital Monopoly releases.

The principle stays intact. You roll dice, move around a closed circuit, buy squares, build on them and collect rent from the others. What changes is the wrapping: film locations replace streets and matching structures replace houses and hotels, so you travel between planets and stations while still counting money.

A computer version of a board game had one clear advantage over cardboard: it did the arithmetic for you. No more calculating rents, dealing out money or policing the rules during auctions, and it could be played alone against artificial opponents. In the 1990s that was the main reason board games were converted at all.

1997 fits technically as well. PC board game adaptations ran at resolutions that showed the whole playing surface at once, added pre-rendered animations for purchases and bankruptcies, and carried audio from the films. It was a standard family shelf title, sold beside quizzes and card games.

The OldGame.cz card for this conversion captures the year, the studio and images; starting it in a browser is not included.