RollerCoaster Tycoon 1 and 2

RollerCoaster Tycoon 1 and 2
"Rollercoaster Tycoon is really good value." - A guest
Genre(s): Simulation Platform(s): PC Release Date: RCT1 1998, RCT2 2002 Engine: Assembly x86 Developer(s): Chris Sawyer Productions Publisher(s): Microsoft Windows, Infogrames, Hasbro Interactive Country: United Kingdom Successor: RollerCoaster Tycoon 3

RollerCoaster Tycoon is a construction, simulation and management game created by Scottish game developer Chris Sawyer who previously created Transport Tycoon. It was initially designed to be a sequel to Transport Tycoon until being retooled into a rollercoaster creation game. In this game, players manage an amusement park, build an assortment of theme park rides and satisfy guests while managing finances and maintaining the park. Each park has a designated goal that they must reach within a specific time period.

First launched in 1999, then with the first expansion Added Attractions (Corkscrew Follies in NA) released in November 1999 featuring new ride types and scenarios, the second Loopy Landscapes was released in September 2000 with additional ride types and construction features like terrain textures and new scenery.

The sequel was released within 2002, RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 largely retains the same engine as it's predecessor only with improved graphics and guest AI. The expansion Wacky Worlds was released in January 2003, and Time Twister released in August 2003 with both add-ons mainly adding additional scenery packs, reskinned ride types and scenarios.

Why These Games Rock

1. With it's streamlined presentation, RollerCoaster Tycoon brings the ultimate theme park creator experience to the PC. The experience is not just about building coasters, but managing the park through assessing visitor's needs and financial management but executed well that it doesn't feel too tedious. A creative title that lets you build to your heart's content while offering simplistic to use features and mechanics but with a lot of depth to learn and master, becomes simple once you get the hang of things.
2. Simulated physics and authentic sounds of the rides. All the rides have sense of weight imbued within them and realistically adhere to inclines, take time to accelerate and even the passengers granting extra weight, giving a sense of immersion to the rides. It is very satisfiying to see the trains zoom through the slopes and twists, slowing on steep hills.
3. Compared to Sawyer's previous title like Transport Tycoon or other tycoon or management games, the financial system while simplified is streamlined for to be better accessible. It is as simple as taking loans while minding interest, buying land rights or adjusting prices for entry of park or rides over time. Very intuitive for even less financially knowledgable players.
4. The engine for it's time was a robust engineering marvel, able to handle quantitative amount of sprites and objects without slowing down, running perfectly on any system at the time of the release, and for today's systems still holds up well.
5. Great assortment of rides with many of them being inspired from real-life: from sprawling Go-Kart tracks, Monorail transportation lines, Towering Chairlifts, Customisable Mazes to the Steel Twister coasters that flexibly zooms through and curves and inversions! This also extends to the scenery packs with so many choices to create immersive atmosphere to your park and rides.
6. Nearly lifelike Guest AI. Every individual guests have their own specific preferences and needs that have to be managed. And it feels so much satisfiying to fullfill their park experience.
7. Splendid and timeless graphical and auditory presentation, with the sprites and animations of the rides in action being the highlight seeing them twist flawlessly with the passengers and able to have many customisation options on your rides, and landscapes as well, variety of textures to choose from.
8. Smooth user friendly UI that lets you multitask many things at once with multiple windows.
9. Building system is simplistic enough, although expert to master. Aside from space constraints and height limits, there are no limits when it comes to creating long coasters, rides can be built at tall heights or underground, it can be possible as long as budget or space provides the means to undertake an accomplishing ride of your dreams. One more interesting element is that constructing coasters in this game has depth that must be harnessed to fully create the most entertaining and profitable attractions. Elements like intensity ratings, track pieces, entry value and coaster types must be understood and controlled.
   • Any creations can be saved and inserted for later application in other maps, or choose from pre-built designs to quickly build a reliable ride on demand.
   • The versatile track editor also allows for some unusual coaster layouts, for instance you don't have to create a single station to house both entrance and exit, it can be seperated or that certain rides don't need to be built in a complete circuit.
10. Adding to the value of constructing them, some coasters also have special functions within them, a Corkscrew or Looping coaster can have for example a 'powered launch mode' that enables the trains to launch and come back as in a 'boomerang style' motion, or that rides can synchronise between stations to create 'dueling' coasters that have two seperate trains racing each other. It is another intuitive layer of customisability that enables builders to create versatile ride types than just the typical circuit.
11. Mostly challenging scenarios each with their own identity, difficulty and diverse goals. The parks also are creatively twisted with outrageous settings like a glacier, castle complex to even an alien planet and recreations of real world parks! Easy to understand goals but complex to accomplish from achieving 1000 guests within few years, complete the unfinished coaster projects, to increasing a small sized park's value while trying to cram in rides in the tiny enclosed space. The scenario content overall in the base game and the expansion is huge, with plenty of alternative solutions on completing them.
12. What's highly engaging about the scenarios are that they usually grant you ample variety of rides, allowing for creative approaches on any mission. The methods outlined aren't strict, it is really up to the player's creative decisions in achieving that goal.
    • Some scenarios are also creatively designed in a way they show off creations that players can accomplish within the base game, with Diamond Heights for example having two coasters that race each other (Agoraphobia and Claustrophobia) within the entirety of the park.
13. Hire staff to automate park issues, from the Handymen as park janitors, Mechanics to mantain ride stability, to the entertainers who can enlightens unhappy guests.
14. The expansions themselves were very welcoming additions that improved the quality of the base game, with Added Attractions adding additional rides like the Roto-Drop tower and Loopy Landscapes with additional terrain textures and another new rides like air powered Vertical coaster, and additional scenarios including Real parks.

RollerCoaster Tycoon 2

1. Improves the initial game engine to create convienent features such as stacking scenery items, wide connected path option, manually elevating constructed rides with SHIFT key and remove scenery without exiting the ride or path construction interface.
2. Introduces some new features in alieviating previous issues: First Aid stalls to quickly reduce nausea instead of slowly restoration with benches, the Cash Machine to refill guest's funds to stay in parks longer.
3. New rides like the expansive Giga Coaster that uses special piece to quickly reach the top hill and grants insane excitement bonuses, and ride operation options like shuttle mode for optimised monorail setups without creating a full circuit. This edition also implements new track pieces like downward curved banks for wooden and steel coasters for intensity reduction, wooden helix pieces and large curve slope pieces for smoother ride experience.
4. Finally a dedicated coaster designer mode has been implemented allowing you to create coaster and ride tracks in a blank area, saving the creations for future use, instead of using scenario to build while being restricted with funds or terrain.
5. Scenarios can be now custom made, either start from scratch or from a save. The files for the scenarios can also be shared and are supported by the game.

Bad Qualities

1. Guest and Staff AI has it's flaws, on wide paths they wander aimlessly and tend to get lost or not prioritise their objectives. They sometimes do not actively seek to complete actions or urgencies (dispose litter properly or seek out first aid rooms, unable to properly path find on thick paths, mechanics getting lost, boats becoming stuck or lost).
2. You cannot build and remove while in a paused state. Everything has to be built in real time so it can be a hassle to manage while building a project.
3. Security guards are worthless investment, they have singular purpose to deter Vandals from destroying path decorations. They walk slowly and never actively apprehend these offenders. However these troublesome guests aren't frequent and are easy to remedy through simply maintaining the cleanliness of the park.
4. The base RCT2 does not include much scenarios compared to the previous entry, although the later expansions do make up for content.
   • Compared to the RCT1, RCT2 scenarios are also notoriously trickier than their advertised difficulty.
5. The RCT2 expansions are considered inferior as they didn't really improve upon the general experience of the sequel as it only added cosmetic changes like ride reskins or additional scenery sets. Also the scenery packs while bountiful are a contrasting eyesore to the original's art style, the objects introduced are oversized and and have overly detailed appearances that awfully stick out to the original assets.

Reception

RollerCoaster Tycoon was met with highly positive acclaim from critics and audiences and became a best selling title in 1999. Most praised for the creative application and intuitiveness of the construction system and the spectacular physics of the rides while some criticised the lack of sandbox option, custom scenarios or lack of speed settings.

The sequel RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 was positively recieved although with criticisms that it was not considered a true sequel due to the minor differences and additions between the two. Nevertheless, the game was praised for being more customisable and refined than the predecessor.

Tips

• If your coaster stats are too intense, then the cars should take inversion pieces (loops, twists, corkscrews) at slower velocities. Highly also consider also using banked turns as they significantly reduce nausea compared to unbanked ones.
• For park value scenarios, higher intensity rides add significant value to the park. Plus guests are more willing to spend on expensive entry prices towards highly intense rides.
• Scenery items aren't only for decoration, they actually provide slight bonuses toward the ride's Excitement rating. Larger items give bigger bonuses.
• Run advertisements frequently if you have the funds, they bring in constant streams of guests for revenue.
• Try to use up all the available loan that the bank allows, use to build a profitable coaster that can generate steady income to build more rides. The interest rate on most scenarios is not consequential.
• Entertainers alieviate a guest's happiness, place them in long queues to ensure they are perpetually in line.
• Rain will deter guests from entering uncovered rides, prefered to get in sheltered rides like Haunted Mansion, Dodgems or Carousels. You can cover tracks with roofs to count the ride as 'Sheltered'.

Trivia

• Dedicated fans of the series have developed a continuation to the RCT2 game called OpenRct2 that features more refinements including larger guest limits, RCT1 content importation, speeding game time, custom plugin and rides support, cheat and debug tools, using any car type on coasters and multiplayer component.
• The infamous feature of guests drowning was a product of limitations as programming them to swim to land was resource intensive at the time.
• Renaming Guests with particular names gives certain behaviours to them: Chris Sawyer will photograph the park, Simon Foster idles to paint on easel or Mr Bean driving Go-karts at a snail's pace.
• RollerCoaster Tycoon 1 and 2 were distributed in cereal boxes branded by General Mills.
• In 2012, a 4chan user created a ride with a tremendously elongated length and ride time of 4 years called "MR BONES WILD RIDE", posting it onto the /v/ board. This became a viral subject of memes and Creepypastas related to the game.
• The game was entirely constructed within a coding language known as Assembly. It is notoriously complex by programmers as the code is hardly readable by humans but is the closest language to directly interacting with the CPU allowing for optimisation without decompiling, a decision made to handle the resource intensive nature of the game that with hardware at the time wasn't as powerful enough as today. And all of this was accomplished by the sole developer which was an impressive undertaking.

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