Are you looking for a fun game that will teach you practical business skills? Gazillionaire Plus is a great game for ages 8 and up.
In Gazillionaire Plus you are starting out as a needy capitalist looking to make your millions. You choose your spaceship based on how much cargo you wish to haul, how many passengers you wish to carry, how many crew members you will need, how much gas and power it takes to run and how fast it will go. You borrow money from one of the greedy aliens who will charge you a fair interest rate, depending only on his whims. You prepare to launch your first mission to make some money so you can pay your bills and perhaps have enough money to be the first player to make your million dollars. It isn't as easy as you think.
There are variable problems that can arise from time to time. The gas prices may skyrocket at the time your gas tank is low and you are short on money. A competitor may pay someone to sabotage your business. Your crew may demand a raise or go on strike. Face it, it's a dog eat dog universe in the business.
It is up to you to keep your company making a profit. A serious mistake could bankrupt you. You can choose the products you wish to transport or pick up stocks from each planet you visit. Buy insurance or go without at your own risk. This game is all about learning the nitty gritty rules of economics.
You can play alone against the computer with the option of having up to 6 players. There are 6 different levels of play from tutorial to expert. You can also play this game with your friends via email. You must give this one a try!
You can get a functional trial version of this game that limits you to 25 plays. Some of the features are disabled, but it will give you a good idea of the CD rom version which has better sound, graphics, and more flexible options for play. Free version can be downloaded at Gazillionaire Plus
The full version of this game is $29.99. It is well worth the price. This would be an excellent game for kids who need to learn about handling money. Very addictive!
This is not a paid plug, I actually have this game and am not paid to give this game a review. I truly believe this is a good game, especially for those who love to learn business skills. Sadly, this is also a game technology has almost rendered obsolete and they have not made a new version for newer systems. So if you buy this game used or have upgraded to a newer version of windows, you may encounter these problems:
Correcting Gazillionaire Bug In Newer Windows Versions
- It says the amount you entered is too high (out of range)
- It seems like the graphics are missing from the game
- An input box pops up but is either too skinny or misshapen
This is the message I received from Lava Mind to handle the problem:
It's probably due to a conflict with your hardware acceleration. To fix this problem simply go to your graphics software and disable the graphics acceleration setting. If you do this, the game will work perfectly with any graphics card.
Let me start by saying all graphics cards a slightly different. As you know, there are literally hundreds of different graphics cards out there. What I've described below is a pretty standard way of turning off the acceleration. You may have to make some allowances for your particular graphics card.
- Put the mouse anywhere on the desktop screen (but not on any icon).
- Right click the mouse and a little screen will appear with some options. "Chose "Properties".
- There will be a Window that says "Display Properties".
- Click on "Settings".
- Then choose "Advanced Properties".
- There is a Window called "Advanced Display Properties".
- Chose "Performance".
- Then under "Graphics" there is a setting for "Hardware Accelerator" (Note it will say "Basic accelerator functions- Use this setting to correct more severe problems such as unexpected errors in programs).
- Mine has four settings. They are: None, X, X, Full. The game will play on None or the first setting afterward only.
- Another trick for other types of graphics cards is to moved the setting to 800 x 600, then move the setting for performance to 1 click from the left (using the slider bar).
If this doesn't work, try turning the graphics accelerator back ON. Sometimes that helps. Fiddle with the graphics settings and see what works best on your system. This works for 90% of the people with this problem.
If for some odd reason your graphics card doesn't appear to have an advanced properties page, try dropping the resolution and color count. This should solve the problem.
Another solution is to simply use Virtual PC 2004 and emulate a win 9x o/s. You can download it for FREE. This solves the problems under Win XP. This work around is a fairly straight forward one... most newbies should be able to get this to work so long as they can run Virtual PC... (yes, it does work under Win XP home). Also...you have to have a copy of the o/s your installing to as they are not included with virtual pc.
If nothing else works, another source of the problem could be your video drivers. We've found the interaction of the Creative Labs video drivers (Nvidia Anihilator2 Geforce2 64) and Windows XP SP1 can create this conflict when both are installed on the system. After flushing the SP1, everything should come back to normal. Users do not really need to keep SP1 on their system because SP1 is still in its beta version and many other problems have been noticed with SP1. The Creative Labs graphics cards (especially the GB0010 series) are very fond of editing this controler with their drivers. This is why the problem occurs. Please contact Creative Labs or your graphics card manufacturer if you have this problem and want to know more.
Lastly, if you have your screen resolution set at 1024x768, reconfiguring it to 800x600 or 640x480 may solve the problem, or at least reduce it.
I would personally recommend you just install the Virtual PC 2004 and get it over with if you don't want to fiddle around with it too much OR if you have Windows ME or 2000 you can right click on the Gazillionaire icon and select properties and click on the Compatibility tab then check the boxes: Run For Compatibility Mode [Windows 95]; Run In 256 colors; Run In 640x480 Screen Resolution; Disable Visual Themes; and Turn Off Advance Text Services For This Program. Then click Apply and close it.
