The game comes from artist Lee Moyer, designer Keith Baker, and sculptor Paul Komoda. The playing pieces look fantastic, Paul. They should since this game has been a work-in-progress for nearly 20 years. Now it is finally going to get real because their Kickstarter campaign was a success. (Though you still have about 2 weeks to get in on the action.)

This looks much better than all of those other lame Monopoly clones. Hopefully it will have been worth the wait. Supposedly it plays like a combination of Arkham Horror, with play elements of Munchkin thrown in.

[via io9 via Nerd Approved]

Since there are so many Street Fighter characters to choose from, Capcom is leaving it up you to vote on which ones you want. If you want your say, head over to their blog and vote. Right now, the choices are down to: Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Guile, Blanka, E. Honda, Zangief, Dhalsim, Balrog, Vega, Sagat, and M. Bison. Unfortunately, it looks like Akuma and Rufus didn’t make the cut.

[via Obvious Winner via Geekosystem]

The tokens are also Web-related, such as the Facebook silhouette and the Google Maps pin. I’m not sure what the star token is referring to though. Should’ve gone with the Reddit alien.

Speaking of Reddit, the sharing site and other popular sites are inexplicably missing on the board. I also think Facebook and Google would’ve been better stand-ins for the game-ending Boardwalk and Park Place properties instead of Yahoo! and Flickr. Then again, this is just a concept. But surely the Internet has more fans than Star Trek, so I don’t see why Hasbro wouldn’t consider releasing an actual Web Edition.

[Behance via The Curious Brain via Jay Mug via Design You Trust]

What you’re staring at here is a giant Scrabble board, which measures in at nearly 49 square feet. It’s made by artist John Kahn, using Russian birch plywood, covered with galvanized steel and vinyl game graphics. Each one of the game’s 100 tiles is made from wood with a strong magnet inside, and measures a whopping 4-3/8″ square. The board also comes with two wall-mounted tile holders, and a pair of tile racks for game play – though it would have been nice for them to include two more – in case you want to play a four-player game.

Only nine of this gigantic Scrabble set are being made, and with a price tag of $12,000(USD), I can’t imagine they’ll all be snapped up quickly. But if you have enough enough capital to afford one, you can check it out over at Hammacher Schlemmer now.

[via SUATMM]

The ePawn Arena is designed for games which use physical pieces, such as Dungeons and Dragons style RPG games and the demo below shows how figurines placed on the arena can interact with each other. For instance, the figures can attack each other with weapons and magic spells, but if a map is programmed with walls the attacking figure’s spells will be blocked. Pretty cool no?

This device won’t just work with RPGs, of course. It’ll also work well for games like chess, backgammon, and even air hockey. They are also offering an SDK for iOS (current), Android and PC platforms (future) so developers can make their own games which use the technology.

They’re also working on a version of the technology which doesn’t use a display at all, but allows you to play with pieces on top of a traditional gaming surface, and then send the information back to your device.

ePawn is hoping to have their first device in stores later this year for about $400(USD) for a 26-inch LCD gaming board. That’s not a terrible intro price and it will come down in time. Keep in mind that’s the board itself will require a smartphone, tablet or PC to work, but since most of us already have one or all of those, that shouldn’t be a problem.

[via Dvice]

This chess set was created by DeviantArtist Joker-laugh. While he doesn’t say much about how he made the actual chess pieces, the board measures 25 × 25 inches, so it’s quite big for a chess set. He used wood, small tiles, and stone for the board. He tried to make it match the pyramid temple in the AvP film.

On the Predator side, I like how he made the cloaked pieces, and all those tiny skulls. There’s no doubt that it must have taken Joker-laugh hours and hours of meticulous painting to get all these pieces just right.

[via Make:]

LeRoy didn’t include the house and hotel pieces he used, so I don’t know if he made custom ones as well, but as you’ll see in the gallery below the game has its own property cards, bills – that are not convertible to Omni-gel – and player tokens, although the latter are just palette-swaps of Shepard’s helmet. A Normandy token would’ve been awesome, or an Omni-Tool, or a Mako – actually no, screw that vehicle.

The graphic on the center of the board is mesmerizing. Fire up your starship and take a mass relay to deviantART to browse the pictures of the board game in high-res. See this Hasbro? I’m throwing credits on the screen and nothing’s happening. Make it happen. With all due respect to Trekkies, this board is way more awesome than the official Star Trek Monopoly.

[via Rampaged Reality]

The set looks pretty cool and features those animated lenticular images which move when you tilt the pieces up and down. The set has 32 detailed characters from the series. One side is the Doctor Who heroes and the others are the villains. The bad king is the Supreme Dalek and the good king is The 11th Doctor. The bad queen is the Weeping Angel and the good queen is Amy Pond.

The chess set sells for $40 (USD) over at ThinkGeek or Amazon, and you might still be able to get one in time for the holidays if you spring for expedited shipping – or if you happen to have a TARDIS.

Designer Will Shannon’s Chalk Chess set is exactly what it sounds like. Instead of just creating an impromptu board on the sidewalk using chalk, the pieces themselves are also made from chalk. I had no idea they even made black chalk. Who knew? Pieces range from 1.5″ tall (pawns) to 3.5″ tall (kings).

And while you can use the pieces themselves to create your game board, you’re likely to wear them out pretty quickly that way. I’d go ahead and throw a couple of pieces of regular chalk in the game box to preserve the playing pieces.

Oh, and this goes without saying – you probably don’t want to play with these in the rain. While its manufacturer, Suck UK is currently sold out, you can find The Chalk Chess set over at Useful Things for $19.95 (USD).

I was hoping that this was an officially-licensed game from Hasbro, but BioShock fan KatMann actually put together this fully-playable edition of Monopoly, inspired by BioShock. The game replaces the familiar locations of Atlantic City with landmarks of the undersea world of Rapture.

As you roll the dice, you’ll stop at the Little Sisters Orphanage, Adonis Baths, Eve’s Garden, eventually making your way to Fontaine’s and Cohen’s Apartments. I like how those are the expensive blue properties. Speaking of which, I’ll give you $1 if you’ve got Boardwalk from the McDonald’s Monopoly game and mail it to me.

But I digress. You’ll also find that Community Chest and Chance have been replaced with the more appropriate “Power to the People” and “Swami” cards. Nice touch. There’s even Rapture currency for you to spend. Although I think that it would have been better for the banker to hand out syringes filled with ADAM to spend on plasmids and gene tonics.

So if you want to play Monopoly: Rapture Edition for yourself, there’s a file to print out the board, deeds and money here, though I didn’t see any Power or Swami cards in the archive. Guess you’ll have to make up your own. I’m sure you can come up with something. Here, I’ll get you started:

[via Rapture City Archives via Elysha The Riddell]

Other features include over 290 custom game pieces, which include: 5 PMC Armies, 8 Bosses, Outer Haven Battleship, Drebin’s Shop Cards, Territory Cards, PMC Headquarters, Custom Outer Haven Game Board, Custom Earth Game Board and 7 dice.

This is a game that any serious MGS fan will want to own. You can pre-order it from October 3 through November 15 and it ships in November. You don’t even need to be sneaky to get it. Price is unknown at the moment.

[via Albotas]

Still, droid surgery sounds kind of fun, and Hasbro makes it a little more entertaining by replacing the old Operation buzzer with “Realistic Sound Effects” (as realistic as a fictitious droid from a galaxy far, far away can be.)

Well, at least 3PO gets a little screen time with a couple of small malfunctions to repair, but nothing quite as dramatic as “limbs severed and stuffed in a backpack.” That’s one malady I’d like to see you fix with a pair of tweezers.

Star Wars fans who need just one more item to round out their collection (this week) can head over to ThinkGeek, and order this special droid edition of Operation for $29.99 (USD).

[via Laughing Squid]

What about the cards? Each one has a perk from Fallout 3 or Fallout New Vegas with a retro playing card image in back. It is truly a work of geek art. I wish Elizabeth were my girlfriend.

[via Geeks are Sexy]

As you’d expect, most of the elements of the game have been given a trekkie twist, from the houses and hotels, which have been renamed “ships” and “fleets”, to the player tokens. Instead of the usual thimble and bag of coins, they’ve been replaced with a Vulcan harp, phaser, communicator, Klingon blood wine goblet, shuttlecraft and of course the captain’s chair. In case you were wondering why the starships are not tokens, that’s because they fill in for railroads instead.

You can order the Star Trek Monopoly Continuum Edition either from ThinkGeek for $40 (USD), or Amazon for about $26.

[via Geek Alerts]

The geeks over at LensRentals who entertained us with that lens with 50 UV filters attached last month came up with the idea for this camera lens chess set. As the story goes, a couple workers were in a new warehouse waiting for people to show up to connect some utilities and decided to use some tiles they found to kill some time.

They also had some lenses sitting in the warehouse so the thing that came to mind was a chess set. The white lenses are Canon and the black are Nikon. You can even rent the chess set if you feel the need but it’s not cheap. The lens chess set rents for $9,221 per week and the shipping runs into the thousand-dollar range. One can only imagine how much it would cost to purchase it.

Actually as you can see in the picture Threepio has a couple of problems too, but when wasn’t there something wrong with the guy, really?

The game works exactly the same way as the original, except this time it’s quite understandable if your patient light ups and buzzes when you botch the operation. Warp over to Toywiz and prepare $27 credits (USD) to pre-order the Star Wars Operation R2-D2 edition.

[via Gadgetreview]

The game allows you to construct the habitats of piggies, and then use a slingshot to destroy them. Players draw a card and have to build the shown structure before their opponents launch an Angry Bird in an attempt to knock it down. Those piggies can drive anyone nuts with their smirks when you fail a level while playing the video game.

We first heard about this at this year’s CES, but you can now order the Angry Birds Knock on Wood board game over at ThinkGeek for $23.99 (USD).

[via GeekAlerts]

King bought the lightcycle die-cast toys as well as the Recognizer, and then made a game board by laser-cutting acrylic and then coating it with black light reactive paint. The trails are also laser cut acrylic. The board itself seems to rest on top of a lazy susan to make it easier to access game pieces.

Click to View Embedded Video Clip

The elevated section is a nice touch; it would’ve been nice if there were more on the board. Check out the video’s description on YouTube for more info on the game’s rules.

[via Ars Technica]

Actually, it’s not the first Tetris board game, but this one at least looks sort of like the real game. Tetris Link was created by the John Adams company in the UK. They’ve had to rework the game a bit, so it can be played without any sort of electronics. Players score each time they link three or more pieces together. The opposing player places their pieces to try and block this from happening.

The game is expected to be released this spring, so look for it everywhere. The gameplay doesn’t really sound like Tetris, to be honest, but it’s an interesting take on a classic game.

[via Pocketlint]

The chess set includes 32 hand-painted figurines from the classic Nintendo video game series including Mario, Luigi, Princess Peach, Yoshi, Toad, 1-up mushroom, Bowser, Bowser Jr., Birdo, Goomba, Hammer Bros., and Magikoopa.

I don’t know about you guys, but I think I’d rather have Toad playing the role of the pawns instead of some lousy gold coins – but beggars can’t be choosers, I suppose. And what’s with Luigi being the Queen to Mario’s King? That’s just a little too weird for me. I know Peach is just a Princess, but still – I think that might have been a better choice. At least Magikoopa looks the part of the bishop.

The entire set should be available this Fall, and can be pre-ordered now over at First4Figures for $44.99 (USD). At least they didn’t put a crown on Luigi’s head.

[via GoNintendo]