[typing]
What do you get when you combine Theme Park,
Disney's Coaster and Transport Tycoon?
You get a... pile of old DOS games.
You also get RollerCoaster Tycoon,
the 1999 management simulation game from Chris Sawyer,
MicroProse and Hasbro Interactive.
And yes, that's the same Scotland- based independent game developer
Chris Sawyer who got his start doing PC ports
for games like Frontier: Elite II
and Birds of Prey.
He's also the designer of the absolutely incredible Transport Tycoon in 1994
a follow-up of sorts to the also excellent Sid Meier's 1990 simulator,
Railroad Tycoon.
In fact, the first "TT" did so well
that he expanded the game a year later with the now-legendary Transport Tycoon Deluxe
and immediately started thinking about a sequel.
But while working on Transport Tycoon 2,
Sawyer developed a keen interest in roller coasters.
Presumably also inspired by the 1994 Bullfrog game Theme Park,
his development focus shifted to a game he was calling "White Knuckle."
It eventually adopted the "Tycoon" suffix used by other MicroProse simulators,
and RollerCoaster Tycoon was born.
While the original game was published in 1999,
it didn't take long for the expansion packs to start littering store shelves.
The first was Added Attractions in late 1999,
known in the US as Corkscrew Follies, for whatever reason,
followed by Loopy Landscapes in 2000.
After the Hasbro buyout by Infrogrames,
they released special editions of RCT.
Those in 2002 were Totally RollerCoaster,
which included the base game and Loopy Landscapes,
and RollerCoaster Tycoon Deluxe,
which had the game and both expansions.
In 2003, we got RollerCoaster Tycoon Gold,
which seems to be mostly the same thing as Deluxe.
I have the three-CD version of Gold right here,
and it's probably the retail version of the game I'd recommend grabbing.
It's got a nice, embossed iridescent box
and physical manuals for each game,
so none of that digital PDF garbage.
However, if you don't mind PDF garbage,
there's also the DRM-free digital release on GoodOldGames.com
It's got everything in one 357 MB download
and it's only $5.99.
Plus, it works great on even the newest versions of Windows,
so you don't have to deal with any weird CD checks or compatibility fixes.
The game starts off with a simple, little introduction image
with some appropriate screams and coaster noises,
[high-pitched screams]
followed by creepy merry-go-round music
and some amusement park demonstrations in the background.
The menu is extremely simple.
All you can do is start a new game, load a previous one,
play a tutorial or quit like a quitter.
Going through the tutorial would be a good idea if you are totally new to RCT
or haven't played Bullfrog's Theme Park.
However, you can just start a new game and you'll go through the same stuff,
just without any messages telling you exactly what to do.
You have several tabs worth of content to play through,
consisting of the main game, the expansion packs,
and some extra scenarios that were once available on the RCT website.
To play the game, you'll need to choose a park or scenario to solve.
Only a few are available at the beginning,
but as you complete more packs, you'll unlock more parks to play.
Choose your destiny
and you'll be taken to the destiny chosen,
and provided with a list of objectives to meet.
These range from things like having a certain number of guests in your park,
gaining a high enough park approval rating,
or having a high enough park value.
You'll also be given some deadline to complete these by,
which provides an omnipresent sense of urgency to the game.
This is also the first time you'll be able to change any options,
since only now is the options menu made available.
It's all useful stuff here,
like sound options, temperature and distance units, key bindings.
Mmm, options.
You can also change the screen resolution,
but unfortunately it only goes up 1024x768,
which looks a bit crappy on a widescreen LCD monitor.
You can hack the original game to run in 1280x720
through a hex editor and it looks great,
but I've yet to be able to find a way to do that with this GOG release.
The overall interface is almost exactly the same
as in Transport Tycoon Deluxe.
A bit strange, since that was a DOS game from many years prior,
but it works, I guess.
I'm not a big fan of how practically everything you open
makes another separate window pop up on-screen.
It just clutters up the play space
and it's very annoying to have to open and close these
whenever you want to finagle with some option,
which is all the freaking time.
Oh, well. That's life.
The entire point of RollerCoaster Tycoon
is to solve the issues presented to you in each amusement park.
Sometimes you'll start out with a pretty blank slate,
other times you'll have a pre-existing set of rides and attractions to manage.
But no matter what, you'll need to make the choices you need to make
to transform your park into a machine of entertainment awesomeness.
First, you've got the landscape itself to deal with.
Now this will vary in each scenario
and since you only have a set amount of land to work with,
it is important that the layout of your park makes sense.
You can edit the landscape somewhat with tools
for altering slopes and manipulating water and flora,
and due to the isometric graphics and the tile-based system it uses,
it's quite simple to accomplish.
But this is extremely expensive and it gets even more expensive
if you just want to buy new land to build on.
So make wise choices when planning your park layout.
Once you've gotten a basic idea of where you want to place things,
start placing things.
First you'll need pathways to allow people to get to where you want them to.
They won't stray from these paths,
so it's a requirement that they are not too convoluted for traffic to pass through
There are several different types of paths and you can even change the elevation of them,
so you can make them look cool and get creative with how pathways look.
Of course, just judging by the name of the game,
the main attractions you'll obviously have are roller coasters.
You'll only have one or two to start out with
and you can choose to build pre-made coasters that come with the game,
or create your own coasters from scratch
to use now or save them for later.
It's a very intuitive creation system
and it's one of the biggest draws of the game for me.
Again, due to the tile-based isometric game engine,
designing roller coasters is really as simple as choosing your parts
and placing them in a logical way in a circuit.
This is just something you'll need to practice with, and once you get it,
you'll be able to allow a test run and get some stats of your roller coaster's intensity.
The system used is very similar to how Disney's Coaster game works
in the rating and evaluation system it uses.
However, you do not have the ability to ride the roller coasters.
You can only watch them from an overhead third-person perspective.
Pretty lame, but also understandable.
It really comes down to the limitations of the game engine used.
You also have the options to do some tweaking,
like choosing the car types,
what kind of launching system it will use,
and even the color scheme for the tracks, station and each individual train.
Awesomely, there's even an option to choose the music
that plays when the ride is active,
which really augments the game's amusement park atmosphere.
There are only a few canned musical ditties to choose from,
but you can add two of your own custom songs
as .WAV files if you want to.
I recommend Gary Newman, personally.
There's just a little '80s flair that just fits into any theme park.
[Gary Newman music]
Finally, you'll need to select an entrance and an exit for the ride
and make sure these connect to your pathways
so people can cue up and leave the roller coaster successfully.
Then you can open the ride and watch the money pour in.
If it's looking like a success, you may be able to get away with increasing
the amount it costs to ride the ride.
You can determine this by taking a look
at the thoughts of guests in the park.
Yes, as a roller coaster tycoon,
you have the incredible ability to read minds
and amass them into handy-dandy groups of similar thoughts.
This is an absolutely invaluable resource
that you'll need to take advantage of in order to design your park
to its maximum efficiency and profitability.
If people think your ride is an incredible deal,
it'll likely be in your interests to raise the price a little bit.
If rides are making people too sick,
you may want to try and tone down the intensity a bit
or provide gentler rides as an alternative.
If people are getting hungry, place some food stalls around.
If someone really needs to take a dump,
be sure they have a restroom to use.
And why not charge them a small fee
because, hey, if someone's gotta go, they gotta go.
May as well make some profit while you're at it.
But not everyone can get to a restroom as soon as they feel the need to burst,
especially when it comes to losing one's lunch.
As a result, vomit is a fact of life in an amusement park,
so you'll need to make sure you're properly staffed
to handle all the spewed chunks.
You have four types of staff to hire.
Handymen are your men who prove to be very handy.
They'll mop up vomit,
empty the trash cans,
water the gardens and even mow the grass.
Mechanics are there to tend to the rides,
inspecting them every so often and fixing them when they break.
And, yes, they do break,
and when they DO, if someone gets hurt...
...well, it's really funny,
but other than that, it's actually pretty bad for your park
because then it will have a stigma about being unsafe
and you'll lose lots of cash.
Ugh, people dying.
They're so inconsiderate of your profit margin.
Security guards are there to make sure hooligans don't take control of the park,
smash benches and otherwise disturb the peace.
And entertainers are those thankless individuals
who dress up in animal costumes,
act like certifiable doofuses,
and creep out a notable percentage of children.
Having enough of each of these guys is crucial to keeping a park in that fine balance
between pristine vacation spot and chaotic hellhole.
You don't only have roller coasters, food stands and restrooms to place.
You've got a whole list of rides and attractions
to attract various types of guests.
There are transportation rides like monorails and chair lifts,
gentle rides like ferris wheels, haunted houses and bumper cars,
water rides like boat hires and log flumes,
and so-called thrill rides
like swinging ships, go-karts and gravitrons.
Every single one of these has customization options
like, of course, color schemes and different configurations,
and even the option to name the ride whatever you want.
Ah, I love this option because naming rides
something ironic, satirical or perverted
is a great outlet for my childish creativity.
You also have the option to name your park anything you want,
so it always amuses me that tons of people
still come to visit "This Park Will Give You AIDS."
You can even place custom scrolling signs around your park,
which is an endless source of amusement for someone as easily pleased
by customizable useless things as I am.
Of course, you only have so many things to build.
Thankfully, there is a research system in place,
so you're constantly unlocking new rides, decorations and upgrades.
You also have some financing options
to help purchase all of these goodies,
although taking out loans should be a last resort.
What does help is the option to whore out your name
to spread the word of how awesome your park is.
Providing coupons or ad campaigns for set periods of time
really helps bring in new people to your park.
And with more people comes more money.
Three cheers for capitalism!
Eventually, you'll reach your goal and be scored on how well you did.
You can continue playing the current park
or just move on to the next one.
Do this nearly a hundred times,
and you'll beat the game, I guess.
Each park can take an hour or two to complete.
That's a lot of gameplay
and holy crap, what addicting gameplay it is!
There's something about the atmosphere of this game that is just amazing
and it really sucks me in every time I sit down to play it.
There's no reason that managing an amusement park
should be this darned amusing.
The genius behind every aspect of this game
is obvious as soon as you start playing.
And the way each of the aspects of the gameplay come together
to form a perfect, symbiotic circle of progression is fantastic.
Outside of the Maxis Sim games,
RollerCoaster Tycoon and the other MicroProse Tycoon games
are the best simulators I have played.
They're fun, cerebral, maddeningly addicting
and full of just enough charm so as not to make you sick.
However, there are a few minor ticks that make this one less than perfect.
For one thing, where the balls is the sandbox mode?
Oh, yeah. There is none.
Its scenarios are nothing. You can't even make your own scenarios.
Second, there's the aforementioned clunky UI.
Not only do the windows popping up all over the place bother me,
but the placement and removal of items in your park
can be a real pain due to the way perspective works.
And the fact that the right mouse button not only scrolls the map,
but doubles as the bulldozer.
Yeah, so that means you have no dedicated bulldozer tool.
So mowing down a forest of trees to make way for your monster coaster is a pain an a half.
And even when you do have everything set up properly,
there are no speed options to choose from.
So you can't speed up the gameplay,
letting everything go to a crawl for a while instead.
And finally, there are two sequels to the game,
arguably improving on the formula in almost every way.
RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 is
probably one of my favorite simulator games ever made
because it takes everything from RCT 1 and 2
and improves it in nearly all the ways I wanted.
For that simple reason alone,
I'd recommend skipping over the first two games
and just going right into the the third one.
However, disregarding the superiority of the later games
and the few little quirks that make this one annoying,
the original is still a completely genius sim.
I'd recommend it to anyone at all.
Seriously, just grab RollerCoaster Tycoon in whatever way you can
and enjoy.