Board game riches games that permitted players to emulate the capitalist heroes of the age. One of the first such games, "The Game of the District Messenger Boy", encouraged the idea that the lowliest messenger boy could ascend the corporate ladder to its topmost rung. Such games insinuated that the accumulation of wealth brought increased social status. Competitive capitalistic games culminated in 1935 with "Monopoly", the most commercially successful board game in U.S. history. McLoughlin Brothers published similar games based on the telegraph boy theme including "Game of the Telegraph Boy, or Merit Rewarded" (1888). Greg Downey notes in his essay, "Information
Mystery Mansion (board game) Mystery Mansion (board game) Mystery Mansion is the name of a series of board games in which players search furniture and other objects inside a mansion to locate a hidden treasure or stash of money. The first version of the game was released by the Milton Bradley Company in 1984, the same year when Hasbro took over that company. Instead of a standard game board, the original "Mystery Mansion" features a modular board where players build the mansion by adding new rooms drawn at random. Hasbro then released an electronic talking version under its Parker Brothers brand in the 1990s.