Black Monday

Scott Adams, best known for his comic strip "Dilbert," created Black Monday! back in 1987. In Black Monday!, you are a stock investor with $50,000 to spend, and the object is to make as much money as possible by buying and selling stocks. You can buy stocks from several major American corporations, including Coca Cola, US Steel, Electric Boat, American Airlines, and RCA.

In Black Monday!, each turn is one business day, so once you finish buying and selling, you will see what gains and losses the companies you invested in have made since you made your trades. As a result, you miss out on the action of Wall Street where trades are made constantly and stock changes happen rapidly while the markets are open. Black Monday! lets you play with several people on the same computer, where you and your opponents try to make the most money by the end of the simulation. Player 1 has an advantage in the game where he or she may directly influence stock prices by trading large amounts of shares before the other players can take their turn on the same business day.

The only graphics in Black Monday! are pictures of the New York City skyline at night when the market is closed, and Upper Manhattan from Liberty Island. There is also the title screen and graphs showing market trends. Unfortunately, everything is colored in five colors that do not go together at all: bright pink, bright green, grey, white, and black. This combination of colors is quite unpleasant to look at. There are also no sounds or music at all.

Black Monday! is by no means a completely accurate simulation of the New York Stock Exchange, but it is a great tool for getting a general idea of how the stock market works, and can be a fun game to play for an hour or two. The only replayability in Black Monday! is that you could try buying shares in other companies in new games, and there is enough variance in the game that stocks won't rise and fall the same way in two games.