The Hospital Fees mini-game from Bright Light and EA's Monopoly

After we spent a good 20 minutes playing Electronic Arts' Hasbro, we were intrigued enough by it to set up an interview with the developers at EA's Bright Light studio in the U.K. On Friday, we spoke by phone with creative director Matt Birch and producer Darren Potter. We'll try to bring you the entire interview at a later date, but for now, here's a sample of what we discussed in another installment of Just the FAQs.

Monopoly has been around forever. What's different about this?

The highlight of EA's Monopoly is a mode that they're calling The Richest. "The idea with The Richest was to take advantage of the speed of computing to make a game that a modern family could sit down and play in 20 or 30 minutes," says Matt Birch, the game's creative director. Think of it as the speed chess version of the game you know and love.

Interesting, but vague. How does it work?

For The Richest, your goal is still to amass the most wealth, but here, you keep score with assets. The more properties you own, the richer you are. When you land on a property that no-one owns, it's yours. But when you land on a property that someone else owns, you have to give them one of your properties as rent--and vice-versa.

I get that. But what's with the speed chess analogy?

With The Richest, your counter occupies multiple squares at once rather than just one at a time. To figure out how many squares you'll land on, each round starts with all of the the players competing in a mini-game themed to the Chance and Community Chest cards that we all know and love. After the mini-game is over, the game rolls a number of dice--one for each person playing the game--and players select the die of their choice in the order of finish in the mini-game they've just completed. The number on the face of the die you've picked corresponds to the number of squares that the game will randomly place you on. From there, the game plays out as described above.

How many mini-games are there?

Bright Light is still refining the list of mini-games. Among the ones we played included Get Out of Jail (cut through iron bars as quickly as possible), Hospital Fees (X-ray Mr. Monopoly to find all of his organs) and Ride to Reading (speed around the train tracks without overshooting each of the four train stations). "That's a favorite around the office," Birch says of Ride to Reading. You hold your Wiimote down flat to help the train accelerate as fast as possible. But then as you're approaching the station, you have to pull it back up to brake. If you overshoot, then you've got to go 'round the board again and get to the next station. I guess in a way it's an homage to Densha De Go! or something like that. We could sit and play that all day."

I like the sound of it, but I don't own a Wii. How's this going to work on my Xbox 360--or my little sister's PS2?

Buttons and analog sticks, how else? The game is definitely leading on the Wii, and while the other versions weren't shown, Bright Light is determined to bring an equivalent experience to each machine. Take the Ride to Reading mini-game, for example: you'll push forward on the analog stick to accelerate and pull back to brake. "You actually get a little bit more precision with the analog stick," says Birch. "That's an example where the controller is offering a slight skill advantage on the 360 over the Wii. But then the Wii obviously has a physicality to it that the 360 doesn't offer."

What about online?

We'll have more on that later.

Am I looking at $60 for this?

Nope. It will set you back $40 on the Wii and Xbox 360, and $30 on the PS2.