Automonopoli was released by
Automata UK in June 1983, written primarily in
BASIC, and modelled the board game
Monopoly in every detail of gameplay. Although other versions of Monopoly for home computers were already in circulation for play between human players, at the time of its release
Automonopoli was marketed as the first version of the game with an
artificial intelligence advanced enough for the computer to play against human players. Rather than display the entire board, only two full spaces (and a section of a third) are displayed at one time during gameplay. The board scrolls from right to left as the player advances following each dice roll, while pressing the "X" key takes the player to a separate screen showing a full list of sites and their current ownership, allowing players to buy and sell properties between themselves, to build houses and hotels, and to mortgage and unmortgage properties. On landing on a property the player is offered the chance to buy it; if the player declines, or they have insufficient funds, the property is put up for auction. The game copies the UK version of the
Monopoly board game in every significant detail, including the exact wording of the property names and "chance" cards. Sold almost exclusively by mail order, the game received limited but positive reviews on its release from the few magazines which then covered ZX Spectrum gaming. A short review in
ZX Computing at the time of its initial release, praised the "excellent" graphics and the strength of the computer's gameplay, a theme repeated in a brief review in
Crash. The only full-length review, in
ZX Computing nine months after the game's original release, also praised the AI's gameplay and said that "the only major complaint I can make against the program is its limited use of sound". == Legal action and change of name ==