The premise of the game is to complete a series of preset scenarios by successfully building and maintaining amusement parks through business ownership as a theme park entrepreneur. The key to any park is building a large amount and diverse range of rides for the visitors. Players can choose from dozens of roller coaster types and can also build log flumes, carousels, bumper cars, haunted houses, go karts, ferris wheels, and swinging ships, among other rides. The intensity and type of rides must be balanced, as visitors' preferences vary significantly from person to person. For example, some guests prefer exciting rides and have high nausea tolerance levels, while other guests are just the opposite.
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This is, for a game from 1999, simply amazing. I grew up playing tycoon games mostly on Roblox (I know, kill me), and always had a fascination towards those that let me actually customize, or create my own world; and my god if only I had known about this game. It takes the idea of being a park manager, and perfectly encapsulates it within a pill of gaming greatness. Designing parks, dealing with complaints, expanding, trying new ideas, having a good selection of maps to play with; the customization of rides alone seems insanely cool to me for such an old game. All of this coming together to make a timeless feeling experience for me, and one that I can not wait to see expanded on in the next entries I explore.
I absolutely see the appeal of Rollercoaster Tycoon. It's just not for me ---- and that's fine. I remember making parks with my sister when we little & having a good time, but on my own nowadays, the management side of things gets too overwhelming or uninteresting after a short time. It's all done extremely well; not jiving with simulation/management type games is just a me thing.
I used to play this game as a child and enjoyed it, but I was never able to build my own rollercoaster. To do so, you need to have a good understanding of spatial awareness and space management, which I lack. Also, it requires a certain level of financial ability. Instead, I would simply place prebuilt rollercoasters in my park and delete trees and decorations. I never knew how to work with pre-existing parks or where to place rollercoasters in them. I would just wait for hours to achieve the park goal, feeling like I was doing nothing productive. Seeing what others created online made me realize I lacked the skills to do the same, and I can't help but feel a sense of jealousy lol.
Pros: Rollercoaster construction in Rollercoaster Tycoon is, ironically, not filled with highs and lows! It's all HIGHS baby! The satisfaction of building a successful coaster is great, but then again, so is the high of building an unsuccessful coaster, as you proceed to watch them crash and burn in glorious fashion!
Roller Coaster Tycoon is a fantastic management sim game, not just for building coasters with the finesse and fun of a Lego or K'nex set, but also entire theme parks filled with a diverse set of rides and attractions for entertaining loads of guests, who in turn, will tell you just how much they're enjoying your park, through their words that you can check in on, or by the vomit they leave on the park grounds! Or if you don't hear from them, they might be DEAD!! Yeah, these rides can be dangerous and harm the parks reputation, so you'll definitely be motivated to create and customize a theme park that everyone can enjoy! Customization options are wonderful, as you work on an isometric angled landmass, where you can alter the terrain in any height and in any fashion, you can place paths and objects in any way you desire, changing colors, names, or adding signs and what have you, to theme rides and the park itself to your heart's content, and it feels GREAT! Of course, the rollercoasters are the star of the show, and they're incredibly fun to watch after you've built them, with pretty nice pre-rendered visuals for the day, to make everything pop with a bit more dimensionality. Sometimes I'd just sit and scroll through my park, not adding anything, and just have fun watching the whole machine in full operation, one that you can be proud of building. Highly addictive and satisfying game, one of the greatest PC sim management games of all time, most definitely.
Cons: Some UI hiccups here and there, like windows popping up endlessly that need to be closed manually, or trying to delete an object on a slope with the isometric point of view can be tricky. But what bothered me as a kid when playing the game, was that you couldn't ride the rollercoasters yourself, which, to be fair, you can't do that in a game that doesn't use real 3D visuals, you're stuck in that isometric angle, which, fine. It's still a joy to watch the coasters zip and zoom along their tracks from afar anyway. In any case, these were issues addressed in later games in the series, but the simplicity of the first Rollercoaster Tycoon, and its genius glitch-free programming by Chris Sawyer, makes for a seamless experience that you can't help but smile while playing in its sandbox.
What it means to me: One afternoon, my brother and I stumbled upon someone playing this game, and we both were all "WHAT IS THAT??" and we had to ask for a turn at the computer, and just go to town. We were instantly hooked, and luckily, later in the year on Christmas, we were gifted Rollercoaster Tycoon at a, get this, church banquet, what a WIN!! Praise the lord!! This game shot up to the top of most played PC games relatively quickly, outdoing SimCity 2000. Theme parks are fun, we loved Six Flags as kids (hell, still enjoy it), and of course love coasters, there's no way a kid ain't gonna love this one. What more can be said, it's a thrill!
Roller Coaster Tycoon is a fantastic management sim game, not just for building coasters with the finesse and fun of a Lego or K'nex set, but also entire theme parks filled with a diverse set of rides and attractions for entertaining loads of guests, who in turn, will tell you just how much they're enjoying your park, through their words that you can check in on, or by the vomit they leave on the park grounds! Or if you don't hear from them, they might be DEAD!! Yeah, these rides can be dangerous and harm the parks reputation, so you'll definitely be motivated to create and customize a theme park that everyone can enjoy! Customization options are wonderful, as you work on an isometric angled landmass, where you can alter the terrain in any height and in any fashion, you can place paths and objects in any way you desire, changing colors, names, or adding signs and what have you, to theme rides and the park itself to your heart's content, and it feels GREAT! Of course, the rollercoasters are the star of the show, and they're incredibly fun to watch after you've built them, with pretty nice pre-rendered visuals for the day, to make everything pop with a bit more dimensionality. Sometimes I'd just sit and scroll through my park, not adding anything, and just have fun watching the whole machine in full operation, one that you can be proud of building. Highly addictive and satisfying game, one of the greatest PC sim management games of all time, most definitely.
Cons: Some UI hiccups here and there, like windows popping up endlessly that need to be closed manually, or trying to delete an object on a slope with the isometric point of view can be tricky. But what bothered me as a kid when playing the game, was that you couldn't ride the rollercoasters yourself, which, to be fair, you can't do that in a game that doesn't use real 3D visuals, you're stuck in that isometric angle, which, fine. It's still a joy to watch the coasters zip and zoom along their tracks from afar anyway. In any case, these were issues addressed in later games in the series, but the simplicity of the first Rollercoaster Tycoon, and its genius glitch-free programming by Chris Sawyer, makes for a seamless experience that you can't help but smile while playing in its sandbox.
What it means to me: One afternoon, my brother and I stumbled upon someone playing this game, and we both were all "WHAT IS THAT??" and we had to ask for a turn at the computer, and just go to town. We were instantly hooked, and luckily, later in the year on Christmas, we were gifted Rollercoaster Tycoon at a, get this, church banquet, what a WIN!! Praise the lord!! This game shot up to the top of most played PC games relatively quickly, outdoing SimCity 2000. Theme parks are fun, we loved Six Flags as kids (hell, still enjoy it), and of course love coasters, there's no way a kid ain't gonna love this one. What more can be said, it's a thrill!
Such an amazing game for the 90s. It's basically just endless fun, and the challenge maps were a great, guided way to play the game.
Basically, Action Park simulator.