Does BP Stand for Beyond Parody?

The folks who released this game ought to update it to include the current cast of characters. There'd have to be a part where the man who's focused like a laser on plugging the hole draws a card and is sent to the golf course.

They were trouble-free times when oil barons were dining out with rich sheikhs and counting their profits.

But little did they know their drilling exploits would come back to haunt them.

Up to four would-be tycoons can compete at exploring for oil, building platforms and laying pipelines to their home countries.

But BP Offshore Oil Strike players must also avoid the dreaded ‘hazard cards’, which state: ‘Blow-out! Rig damaged. Oil slick clean-up costs. Pay $1million.’

Unhappily for BP, that is just one per cent of the amount it has spent each day tackling the very real Deepwater Horizon leak, which has seen millions of barrels of oil gush into the Gulf of Mexico and hit the southern US coast.

The mint-condition game, made by Scottish company Printabox, was donated by a private collector to The House On The Hill Toy Museum in Stansted, Essex. It was very rare and ‘obscure’, said museum owner Alan Goldsmith, who added: ‘The parallels between the game and the current crisis... are so spooky.

‘The picture on the front of the box is so reminiscent of the disaster, with the stormy seas, the oil rig and an overall sense of doom. I was just knocked over by how relevant this game is, despite being made some 35 years ago, to BP’s troubles today.

‘It’s amazing when you think that their own game predicted this big oil slick – although, sadly, not the extent of the cost involved.’ The game was worth only about £75, he said, adding it was not popular at the time of its release.