Mine-A-Million or The Business Game Review

In the long lost days before I was a fully paid up member of the board gaming cognoscenti, but still a keen gamer, I spent a lot of time playing mass-market board games with my non-gaming friends. Our particular favourite was, perhaps inevitably, Risk, which had so much beer spilt on it that the board warped. But the second favourite was a little-known game called Mine-A-Million which, I have since discovered, was later re-branded and sold more widely as The Business Game. I’ve no idea why the name was changed: Mine-A-Million is a hell of a lot catchier if you ask me. Perhaps Waddingtons were seeking ride the coat-tails of Monopoly, or maybe trying to make the game sound like a classy, upmarket pass-time for merchant bankers. If the latter then it’s a serious mistake because it is, in fact, one the nastiest, trashiest mass-market games around which, in spite of some flaws, can be a ton of fun to play.