1937 · Offset Gravure Corp.
Merchant Prince is a fairly simple Monpoly-inspired game - players purchase control of commodities and areas of the world and charge other players for landing on them, with the aim of bankrupting them.
The basic game system is fairly novel. There is a map of the world on which players move ships from port to port (along a track), and a standard track running around the outside of the board on which players move ambassador pieces. On a turn a player rolls the die twice and must use one roll for each piece. Control of commodities is purchased on outer track spaces, but your ship has to be at an appropriate port to do so, establishing a relation between the pieces. Other spaces on the outer track reward or punish players controlling various commodities, and there are also spaces which allow one to become a Merchant Prince controlling one of the six regions of the world (and charge additional "rent" to players).
Another interesting bit is that the game is nominally set in the 25th century, which is used to justify dividing the world into six regions rather than the nations of 1937.
