Rollercoaster Tycoon

Pros • Detailed 2D objects and animations from an isometric perspective. • Huge scrolling 3D terrain. • Very few details overlooked. Chances are that if you can think of it, Chris Sawyer already did. • Huge population which you can manage and view, right down to naming and tracking individual persons. • Population uses a ray-tracing analogy: each individual follows his/her own logic to make up the entire flock mentality. • Sound and screams from rollercoasters have directional and doppler effects. • Realistic ride designs based on actual present-day and past rides. • Ride designs can be saved and traded.	Cons • The 3D terrain is often more of a frustrating obstacle than a benefit. • Music is monotonous and repetitive, a little too much like a real theme park. • No multiplayer options. • Saved ride designs cannot make use of underground terrain.
Bottom Line Rollercoaster Tycoon has almost everything you could want in a micromanagement sim, plus you can make your own rides. Is Rollercoaster Tycoon the best micromanagement sim ever made? It's based on a theme park concept, which means there are dozens of different rides to build and maintain, concessions to manage, crowds to deal with, plus a score of smaller details like garbage collection and vandalism. To top it all off, you can design your own rollercoasters with a huge variety of technologies specific to that purpose. Chris Sawyer has put the fun back in fun park.

Great, the old fashioned way!

The answer is yes. Rollercoaster Tycoon is the greatest game in its genre to date. While it is true that the theme park concept is not new, once again Chris Sawyer has proven that he can patch the holes left neglected by other game developers. Transport Tycoon was top in its class when it was released in 1993 and it has arguably held that position until now.

Chris Sawyer also proves that the need for a huge team for a huge game is not always the rule. He created Rollercoaster Tycoon almost single-handedly, with himself in the lead position of designer/programmer, Simon Foster in the graphics department and notably prolific musician Allister Brimble covering both sound and music.

What's the trick?

The double-whammy trick of micromanagement sims is to:

1. Keep the player perpetually busy with details.
2. Create a realistic changing environment that entertains just by living.

Others have fallen short of that formula. Theme Park's logic fell down and left players asking "Why did it do that?" and Railroad Tycoon II's simplified railroad model had them wondering "Why can't I do that?". Chris Sawyer leaves very few of these types of questions unanswered, players are far more likely to say "Ooooh, that's it!" in a moment of discovering another feature of the game. It's obvious that Mr. Sawyer plays his own games.

Beyond its strive for perfection, Rollercoaster Tycoon is packed with fun. It's fun to create your own rides, it's fun to name a patron and track him in a window, it's fun to raise the price on the washrooms in your park, and it's fun to sack a lazy employee. I could go on and on. There is so much to do and watch in this game, it's honestly been more fun than I've ever had in a real theme park.

What else can you do?

Saving your ride designs and posting them on the Internet, now that's a feature I would have asked for if it hadn't already been included. Testing your rides, with g-force meters galore, is something I would have never thought a reasonable request for a game of this kind, but it's in there nonetheless and that just adds to my respect for Chris Sawyer. Repainting the rides, tweaking speed and other settings on the rides. There are just so many toys in this game.

Where it disappoints

There is no such thing as a perfect game, and the more complex a micromanagement sim is, the more scenarios in which it can fall down. My largest frustration with Rollercoaster Tycoon had to do with the 3D terrain. The system is borrowed from Transport Tycoon, in fact it appears to be the same graphics engine. Raising and lowering land is clumsy and awkward, designing terrain where areas are hard to click on is inevitable. Worse yet, you might design a cool rollercoaster with tunnels that dig into the side of a hill, but if you save it for inclusion into a later game, you will have to place the entire ride above ground. Tunnels only work in interactive mode, which sort of guarantees that the coolest rides come built into specific maps.

While the doppler effects on the sound of the screams from the rollercoasters are very cool, the music from the merry-go-rounds are decidedly not. The music is one big file, looped and looped, guaranteed to drive you insane, a little too much like a real merry-go-round. It's also a performance hog, streaming from your hard drive. Woe be to your framerate if you place a merry-go-round next to a bumpercar ride that also plays music. Fortunately, the music can be turned off, but I would have preferred more variety and a more efficient music playback system.

There are other minor quibbles with the game, but I hesitate to mention them since most are a matter of personal preference and the joys of Rollercoaster Tycoon far outweigh the complaints.

Better than Disneyland?

Okay, I'm not actually a Disney fan, so I keep avoiding Anaheim, so I can't really say. What I will say is that Rollercoaster Tycoon has almost everything you could want in a micromanagement sim, plus you can make your own rides. Chris Sawyer has put the fun back in fun park.

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