Home Back in 2002 Trump had a Real Estate Tycoon video game – let’s check it out

Back in 2002 Trump had a Real Estate Tycoon video game – let’s check it out

Obviously a lot has happened since the Millennium – most of which would probably make us stop and look twice. But back when PC games game in huge boxes on CD-ROMs, the 47th President of the United States lent his name to an Activision video game – Donald Trump’s Real Estate Tycoon.

The game even pre-dates The Apprentice by a couple of years so is one of the earliest examples of Trump endorsed modern-day media.

Back in the day GameSpot rated the game 7.2 out of 10 and called parts of it hugely boring, but the game was pitched as a business simulation with a theme not totally unlike Monopoly, where you go up against Trump to build out the best real estate portfolio in cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Atlantic City, London and Paris, taking over those cities before going up against Trump himself. As you can see, it looks a little like the Sim City of the time.

Developed by a German team called RedCap who were also behind PlayStation classic The Amazing Virtual Sea Monkeys and Bundesliga X, the Trump game was its highest profile release. It was picked up and published by Activision Value and a mobile version later followed, although, as you can imagine, that landscape was pretty barren in the early 2000s.

You can trace Trump’s lineage with games however back to 1989 where he endorsed a board game called, inventively, Trump: The Game. Again this was real-estate themed and saw players pumping Monopoly-esque money into properties and then attempting to negotiate deals with fellow players.

Since The Donald’s first bash at the Presidency there have obviously been lots of low-key games featuring him bashing Biden and the like, and there was his recent modded appearance into Marvel Rivals, but whether we will ever see another endorsed game is unclear. If we did though it would be the greatest game and people who know video games would say it’s the greatest video game ever.

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Paul McNally
Gaming Editor

Paul McNally has been around consoles and computers since his parents bought him a Mattel Intellivision in 1980. He has been a prominent games journalist since the 1990s, spending over a decade as editor of popular print-based video games and computer magazines, including a market-leading PlayStation title published by IDG Media. Having spent time as Head of Communications at a professional sports club and working for high-profile charities such as the National Literacy Trust, he returned as Managing Editor in charge of large US-based technology websites in 2020. Paul has written high-end gaming content for GamePro, Official Australian PlayStation Magazine,…

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