Loved playing this game as a kid, Open Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 has been great for some recent replays: https://openrct2.io
Thank you for this
Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)
11–20 of 47 posts
Re: Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)
#12The author wishes there was more of a storyline to the game. Which is absolutely fine as it’s their preference. But it made me think of how Minecraft has almost no story (well, something was added later but it’s optional to follow it) and perhaps that contributed to its major success. Decent sandbox games don’t need stories if the mechanics are satisfying enough and games like Sawyer’s Tycoons and Minecraft are evide…
Yeah, the author wants a story saying there wasn't enough continuity between scenarios or motivation to continue, but that was a non-issue for me personally. It's been many, many years, but my memory is that while RCT didn't have a completely open sandbox like TT to boot, each scenario was effectively its own sandbox with restrictions that made them interesting. New rides became available you progressed, and each park enabled creativity in different ways. When you finished all of the scenarios, I believe there was a completely open sandbox that became available, and that was like a nice reward. There really was no need for a story, and I think that would have detracted.
Re: Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)
#13MicroProse games in the 90s were next level. So many milsim games where you got to experience a crude 90s graphics recreation of being a service member shooting bogies. I never could complete a mission of F-117A Steal Fighter on Mac System 9. However, RCT was a “Minecraft” of its day without the support of the community. It was huge. Everyone was playing it. I wish modding was a thing back then. We would have gone cr…
I'm not sure RCT ever had a modding community, but it's predecessor, Transport Tycoon Deluxe, did. TTDPatch[0] had several gameplay and quality of life improvements, but it was eventually superseded by OpenTTD[1]. [0] https://www.ttdpatch.net/ [1] https://www.openttd.org/
There is OpenRCT2: https://openrct2.io/
Re: Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)
#14Somewhat relevant: I’ve been following the developer of Car Park Capital on twitter [1], a “retro tycoon game” in their own words. Yesterday, the current MicroProse [2] announced they would publish it.
[1] https://x.com/hilkojj/status/1950872926385037339
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroProse#Brand_revival_(2018...
Re: Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)
#15MicroProse games in the 90s were next level. So many milsim games where you got to experience a crude 90s graphics recreation of being a service member shooting bogies. I never could complete a mission of F-117A Steal Fighter on Mac System 9. However, RCT was a “Minecraft” of its day without the support of the community. It was huge. Everyone was playing it. I wish modding was a thing back then. We would have gone cr…
I'm not sure RCT ever had a modding community, but it's predecessor, Transport Tycoon Deluxe, did. TTDPatch[0] had several gameplay and quality of life improvements, but it was eventually superseded by OpenTTD[1]. [0] https://www.ttdpatch.net/ [1] https://www.openttd.org/
If anyone’s curious to see what a lossless 6016x3384 screenshot of OpenTDD would look like:
Re: Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)
#16Somewhat relevant: I’ve been following the developer of Car Park Capital on twitter [1], a “retro tycoon game” in their own words. Yesterday, the current MicroProse [2] announced they would publish it. [1] https://x.com/hilkojj/status/1950872926385037339 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroProse#Brand_revival_(2018...
There's also the city builder Metropolis 1998 [1]. Similar RollerCoaster Tycoon aesthetic
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/2287430/Metropolis_1998/
[2] (I'm the dev)
Re: Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)
#17Sid Meier founded MicroProse and started with the Tycoon genre with Railroad Tycoon having been inspired by SimCity and Empire.
Your comment makes it sound like he started the company to make Tycoon games, but those came like a decade later.
Re: Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)
#18> Written by Sawyer in pure, ultra-efficient Intel assembly language — an anomaly by that time
Not mentioned in the article, but this did allow for a port of the game to the OG XBOX (733 MHz PentiumⅢ box) way back in 2003, long before the game's eventual remake as RCT Classic for ARM etc in 2017.
Interesting that the XBOX port is RCT1+expansions even though it came out after RCT2 did on PC, maybe due to lesser requirements or probably just to avoid cannibalizing RCT2 PC sales and to double-dip people who had already paid for RCT1 PC: https://youtu.be/Vtincfkl8KY?t=75
Notably one of the XBOX games that has never been backwards compatible lol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games_compatible_...
RCT1 was one of those games that I spent entire summers playing as a kid (see also: SimCity 3000), entirely offline because tying up the house's single phone line with the modem wasn't allowed during the day. Even though RCT2 was objectively the better game it felt like an aesthetic downgrade, and I actively hated RCT3 and still do. RCT1's vibes are immaculate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BitorD-HVuQ
Re: Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)
#19The author wishes there was more of a storyline to the game. Which is absolutely fine as it’s their preference. But it made me think of how Minecraft has almost no story (well, something was added later but it’s optional to follow it) and perhaps that contributed to its major success. Decent sandbox games don’t need stories if the mechanics are satisfying enough and games like Sawyer’s Tycoons and Minecraft are evide…
Story of my life. Literally.
(wonder how many people, especially engineers share this, uh storyline... Just get up, build things)
Re: Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)
#20> Written by Sawyer in pure, ultra-efficient Intel assembly language — an anomaly by that time Not mentioned in the article, but this did allow for a port of the game to the OG XBOX (733 MHz PentiumⅢ box) way back in 2003, long before the game's eventual remake as RCT Classic for ARM etc in 2017. Interesting that the XBOX port is RCT1+expansions even though it came out after RCT2 did on PC, maybe due to lesser requir…
> but this did allow for a port of the game to the OG XBOX (733 MHz PentiumⅢ box) way back in 2003
Not sure if the clock speed is just for reference or emphasis re: efficiency, but RCT1 will in fact happily run on a Pentium 90 (which is still mind blowing to me given the scope of the game)