Montreal is the new Boardwalk?

August 20, 2008 - Back in February, I blogged about the new Monopoly "Word Cities" edition contest where voters can choose which 20 cities will make the board for this new version of the game. Today, the full list of cities were announced: Montreal shockingly will become the new Boardwalk, with Riga, Latvia as the new Park Place.

I'm not sure how Montreal became the most expensive real estate (over London, Paris and New York?) but I guess kudos to Hasbro (the folks behind Monopoly) for sticking to the results of the voting by fans. Still, if it was really based on a list of world cities, I highly doubt Riga, Kyiv, Taipei and Gdynia (I had to look up where that is - it's in Poland) would ever make the list.

It's a bit disappointing - but at least two other Canadian cities made the list: Vancouver (as the new New York Ave) and Toronto (as the new Virginia Ave). But no South American cities? or any other American cities other than New York? a bit shocking.

The board game itself is pretty though - each block has a picture that features the city and around the blocks are pictures of the 68 cities that didn't make the list. Definitely a more worthwhile collector's item than other editions I think.

Here's the full list of 22 cities that made it into the game:

Dark Blue: Montreal, Riga
Green: Cape Town, Belgrade, Paris
Yellow: Jerusalem, Hong Kong, Beijing
Red: London, New York, Sydney
Orange: Vancouver, Shanghai, Rome
Magenta: Toronto, Kyiv, Istanbul
Light Blue: Athens, Barcelona, Tokyo
Brown: Taipei, Gdynia

I got 11/20 from my list - not too bad I guess! The game will be on sale starting August 26.

(Photo credit: Kris Abel/CTV)