Roller Coaster Tycoon (Deluxe)

The Short


Pros
- An expansive theme park sim
- Build shops and rides, hire entertainers and handymen, and much more
- Actually build your own coasters in "design" mode
- Dozens of missions (more with expansions)
- Loads of coaster types and rides
- Insanely addicting

Cons
- The formula for building a good coaster can be difficult to figure out
- Easy to "cheat" your way through the game with cheap exploits
- Ride depreciation is a bit unrealistic
- Micromanagement eventually gets to insane levels on the bigger maps
- No true "sandbox" mode (though an expansion has a map with unlimited money)

Just looking at this screen shot makes me want to boot the game up again

The Long

Not going to lie: Roller Coaster Tycoon is one of my favorite old PC games. If you'll allow a moment of personal indulgence: Roller Coaster Tycoon was the game that headed off my "second wave" of PC gaming love (the first starting with The Incredible Machine 2, and the third with Warcraft III). I spent hours playing this game with my brothers, trying to design the perfect park, and salivating as we awaited for the next expansion pack to come out. Now, thanks to Good Old Games, you can pick up this game on the cheap (as well as it's ok-but-not-vastly-improved sequel), and so last Christmas I jumped on it. I was curious to see if it had held up after all these years.

Guess what? It totally did. This game is awesome.

Things are gettin' crazy

The game is basically like that really old game Theme Park, but improved in nearly every way. Essentially the game has a plethora of missions for you, staring with simple ones (here's a blank park and some money: have fun!) and getting to harder ones (get a certain park rating and guest # in this extremely limited space, etc.). Each park layout is unique and since you can't change where your park entrance is (which is too bad), you have to work around the landscape. You can always use your shovel to raise and lower land, add water, and do all sorts of crazy stuff, but since everything in this game costs a bit of money you'll nickle and dime yourself to death if you are a perfectionist.

It's a pretty simple set up at first: keep your guests happy. You start with the basics: food, drinks, and bathrooms. You can then build simple rides: bumper cars, a ferris wheel, some go-karts (those go-karts are money makers) . Once you've earned enough you can then start constructing roller coasters (beginning with basic steel ones with no loops, and eventually getting to crazy, twisting monstrosities) and that is when the game gets crazy. 

Even the main menu screen is exciting

The game comes with a handful of pre-build tracks (not enough, honestly, but if you have the expansions it adds a lot), but the real joy comes in making your own coasters. The sky is essentially the limit as you can build banks, curves, loops, corkscrews, and anything else. You can even add in-ride photos (and the price gouge the heck out of them) in an attempt to generate more revenue. If you make a mistake on coaster construction, the game refunds you completely (unlike paths, where if you mess up you are out the $2 difference), and you can make coasters that go really high, twist around other rides, go underground; seriously, you can do anything if you can afford it. Creating some wacky (and stupid) roller coasters is a blast. They don't even have to be complete; you can have those ones that just sort of shoot you forward and then let you fall back.

And you aren't just limited to coasters. Want a steam train that encircles you park like in Disneyland? That's there. How about a monorail? Got that. What about some simpler, smaller rides that just fill up the extra space? Can do that too (even if it's a cheap way to earn money). The number of coasters, concessions, rides, and options is staggering, especially with the expansions installed. It's never overwhelming, because the game unlocks things in increments (you have to "research" new ride types in each scenario, and the rate you get new stuff is equal to how much you fund research), giving you time to figure out what you want. You can even focus your research on different things, so if your park is too full of coasters you can instead research food or smaller rides (like slides or hedge mazes) instead. 

"The Purple Puker"

There are some issues with designing your own coasters, though. While the pregenerated rides are somehow immaculate with their ratings (each is given an excitement, intensity, and nausea rating. You want to raise the first one without raising the other two), whenever you build your own you seem to fall flat. Mine always are too intense, even if they seem tamer than the prebuilt ones. This can be frustrating, but it also can be very satisfying when you finally make the perfect steel coaster. You can also save the rides you make so you can build them again in later scenarios, which means your "Rat Race Armageddon" ride can grace every single park you build.

The goal of the game is to get rich and keep your guests happy, which (as stated above) starts simple and gets hard. You have to provide them with benches and trash cans, or else they'll just throw their garbage on the ground and puke everywhere. You have to hire handymen to take out the trash, clean up the puke, and generally keep things looking good. You need mechanics to make sure your rides don't break down or randomly blow up. You need security guards to prevent your stuff from getting vandalized. And you need entertainers to keep people happy while they wait for hours in line for your latest coaster abomination. 

Despite your best efforts, stuff can quickly get overwhelming.

And that is where the game gets tricky. After a while your park gets so big that micromanaging everything becomes a near impossible task. Guests tire of rides after a while, meaning you'll need to drop the prices in order to keep them coming. It's easy to box yourself in if you aren't careful, as you need pathways in order to get to other rides (and you have to keep it somewhat organized or your guests will get lost). You have to keep on hiring people proportional to how much you are expanding, and make certain you have enough freaking bathrooms and food. It gets crazy, and when all you really want to do is design wacky coasters, sometimes the financial micromanaging (especially when advertising gets into the mix) can get in the way of just enjoying the game.

Luckily there are ways to "break" the game. Since you can sell stuff back for almost as much as you paid for it, if guests are starting to get super cheap (like thinking ten cents is still too much to pay for freaking bumper cars!) then you can simply bulldoze a pre-made attraction and put the exact same one in its place. They'll all think it's a new ride, and you'll profit. This kind of feels like cheating, but the fact that rides depreciate in value so quickly (though the coasters tend to work better) makes it seem like that's what the game wants you to do. 

Once you figure out the specifics of the mechanics, you can essentially "break" the game in terms of earning money. Aside from bulldozing rides and replacing them with the same ones to regain interest, you can also make short, crappy, custom coasters (that only last 10 seconds) with reasonably low stats and still make mad bank off of them (when your down payment was substantially lower than the amount people value the ride at). It's unrealistic - who would want to ride a coaster that just goes around in a circle and stops - but it is totally feasible. You can also make pretty much any go-kart coarse and people will line up for miles to ride it, even if it is total crap.  

The game also lacks a "sandbox" mode, where it would basically just give you a huge lot of your choosing, unlimited money, and all the rides upfront. It does have "Arid Heights" in one of the expansions, which gives you a big desert and tons of money (and the charge to never let your park rating drop below 650), but that's just one scenario. It would have been great to have had a "custom map" option with your own rules and details, but it isn't that big of a loss.

You can even color each coaster segment different parts...if you are a total lunatic

I've played every Roller Coaster Tycoon game, and despite the later ones having better graphics (and the ability to "ride" your own creations), I still think the original is the best. With the expansions installed it has way more than enough options for even the craziest park manager, and the massive number of scenarios ensures dozens of hours of gameplay. If you have any interest in simulation games, you should really check this game out. It's one of the best. 

You can buy this game right now on Good Old Games for $5. I picked it up during the Christmas sale for $2.50, and they have the second game (which is essentially the same game but with slightly better UI and a few more rides) on there for $10. Good Old Games makes it so even these ancient games will run smoothly on modern machines (runs great on my Windows 7 64 bit), so you don't have anything to worry about if you get it from them. It also comes with all the expansions, which is the way the game should be played. 

If I were to give it a star rating, it would certainly be five out of five. Now would somebody please turn the sound off on the ferris wheels? I hate that music. 

And as a bonus, you can make deathtraps! WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT?!