T w e n t y S i d e d

I completed the RollerCoaster Tycoon base game last week and started working on the first expansion, Corkscrew Follies. Two things were immediately apparent. First, Corkscrew Follies employs the same challenges and difficulties as the base game, but provides different and additional rides and shops to meet a scenario’s demands. In fact, the research tree will tend to focus on the new elements more than the old elements, requiring you to learn to use the new facilities. The second obvious change was the implementation of scenery and ground elements to represent artificial structures like castles and a variety of other buildings, really enhancing the “themed” idea of your amusement park. Honestly, I had previously associated this change with RollerCoaster Tycoon 2. Probably because I played a lot of the RCT2 base game before I obtained the expansion packs for RollerCoaster Tycoon. It was interesting to see where RCT2’s theming came from. It becomes clear, seeing how these ideas were originally implemented, how the building structures in RCT2 are really the same thing…just with “land” that is invisible (and intangible and non-obtrusive in most situations, if I remember correctly. In RCT, there still has to be a physical piece of land which retains it’s inherent properties to apply the “appearance” of walls, ceilings, etc. to.) Unfortunately, while interesting, I never found this part of the game to be as captivating as the core park management gameplay. A big reason why I never spent all that much time in RollerCoaster Tycoon 2.

Upon realizing I was mainly dealing with cosmetic differences, I started getting a bit bored with RollerCoaster Tycoon, and went looking for other games to mix in…all sim games, of course.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “RCT’s Final Challenges, and Other Sim Games”

Paige Francis He/him

After learning the basics of RollerCoaster Tycoon, the game now runs you through scenario after scenario increasing the perceived difficulty by tightening and eventually combining restrictions. These restrictions all follow simple ideas:

• Decreasing the available space
• Increasing the difficulty of using the underlying terrain
• Starting with a functional park that is handicapped with pre-existing limitations or problems
• Unusual or arbitrary restrictions, including restricting the amount of money available over the course of the scenario

These particular difficulties carry the game through all of the original scenarios. Everything but monetary restrictions are stated or obvious, making that last detail a bit of a surprise when you encounter it. So let’s take a look at the various routes, which start immediately after the 5th scenario, Evergreen Gardens.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “RollerCoaster Tycoon’s Second Gear”

Paige Francis He/him

The original RollerCoaster Tycoon was released as a PC/Windows game in early 1999. It is older than one of my children. Despite RCT’s modern reputation, it was a well-regarded but not uniquely-celebrated title. The game did particularly well in Britain and Europe; most likely due to the original release version, written by Scottish programmer Chris Sawyer, being largely based on British and European theme parks. Much is made of the fact that Sawyer wrote the game entirely in assembly code. We’ve discussed this before; this means the games “code” was written in the actual instructions that could be fed directly to the hardware; rather than in a programming language that had to run through *another* program run by the operating system which translated the game into the instructions the *operating system* would use to communicate with the hardware. This was certainly less common in 1999 than it once was…the advantage of programming in this manner is the performance gained by skipping the middle man. You can find plenty of demonstrations on YouTube that show how significant this increase can be. This practice would, obviously, have been of tremendous use in the earlier, more-restricted days of computer hardware; and has gradually evolved into a tool with specific applicability and use.

RollerCoaster Tycoon had some interesting company in 1999: the hottest titles were all home console games; Pokemon Red/Green/Blue/Yellow/Gold/Silver, Final Fantasy VIII, Donkey Kong 64, and Super Smash Bros. Noted PC releases included Heroes of Might and Magic III and several clones, plus an original Baldur’s Gate expansion and a spiritual sister-game Planescape: Torment. These were accompanied by *many* PC-only role-playing games, noted first-person battle arena games Quake III: Arena and Unreal Tournament, and many well-known sims such as Age of Empires II, SimCity 3000, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri, Pharaoh, and even Sim Theme Park. Of particular interest is the publication of the 2nd and 3rd MMORPGs: Everquest and Asheron’s Call, one of which you can still play.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “RollerCoaster Tycoon (the original)”

Paige Francis He/him