Man, I can still remember the magic I felt when first discovering that game on my cousin's laptop in 1999. Such a simple game yet allowed enough creativity for an 10 year old boy to be imaginative.
There does come a point where there isn't much else to do with the game once you get good enough at it, so I started having fun doing "experiments". One of the things I did in RCT was build "prisons" where I leveraged things like the carousel to work as a one-way door into the park to allow guests to come in but prevent them from leaving; it lead to a barren cement building with a turbo drop coaster designed to be intentionally dangerous so I could "execute" prisoners. There was puke everywhere after a while. What a disturbing mind I had.
I always used the Do Not Enter marquee signs such that once guests entered the park they could never leave. Great for helping meet the total park population scenarios.
If you got enough people into a 2-long segment of footpath with "do not enter" signs containing them you can place a third "do not enter sign" in the middle, and cause all the people to explode from the path and onto the grass.
> There was puke everywhere after a while. What a disturbing mind I had.
I think you were not the only one exploring those sides of those sort of games! I don't remember if it was SimCity 2000 or 3000 that I played the most, but I remember some of these tycoon/management/simulation games let our destructive sides really come out by letting us unleash volcanoes, tornadoes, earthquakes and similar, all at the same time :)
MicroProse 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 crazy but then when you read how RCT was made - glad we didn’t have to do it.
I really miss some of the companies from that era... Red Storm Entertainment, Tom Clancy's vision, comes to mind. The early Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six games had a dedication to immersion that their modern counterparts totally lack.
Ghost Recon (2001) runs perfectly through proton on my linux desktop. I still fire it up from time to time.
The 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 evidence of that.
Sometimes it’s nice to just unwind by playing a game with little to no pressure. You pick it up and drop it at your leisure. The only downside is they can turn into huge time sinks as they don’t have a clear “The End” to them.
I think his critique wasn’t that it didn’t offer a story, but that it didn’t offer a sandbox mode, only a campaign mode… and that the campaign wasn’t really a campaign.
RCT, Railroad Tycoon 2 (which has scripted scenarios and sandbox ), SimCopter and Streets of Sim City were great
RRT2 has it scenarios like Hell or High Water where you have fill in a giant crater with cement by orchestrating trains before ocean levels rise or just sandbox play building railways buying up business and watching connected cities boom. Always loved using cheats to make all competitors trains break down then take over their bankrupt company.
SimCopter and Streets of Sim City had missions/scenarios. Or you could just go fly/drive around any SimCity2000 map.
Remember a SimCopter cheat would essentially nuke the city and set everything in fire.
And Street let you blow up buildings by adding weapons to your car.
Somewhat 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.
> 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
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
I remember FINALLY getting RCT1 from Scholastic Book Club and then a few months later got RCT2 from a cereal box. Was nuts. Easily the best cereal box thing ever.
If you liked micro-prose, they are back in full form with Highfleet. Maybe not "back", but it's one of the most engaging engineering / action games I've played and it has a very microprose feel
21 comments
[ 0.28 ms ] story [ 41.1 ms ] threadThere does come a point where there isn't much else to do with the game once you get good enough at it, so I started having fun doing "experiments". One of the things I did in RCT was build "prisons" where I leveraged things like the carousel to work as a one-way door into the park to allow guests to come in but prevent them from leaving; it lead to a barren cement building with a turbo drop coaster designed to be intentionally dangerous so I could "execute" prisoners. There was puke everywhere after a while. What a disturbing mind I had.
I think you were not the only one exploring those sides of those sort of games! I don't remember if it was SimCity 2000 or 3000 that I played the most, but I remember some of these tycoon/management/simulation games let our destructive sides really come out by letting us unleash volcanoes, tornadoes, earthquakes and similar, all at the same time :)
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 crazy but then when you read how RCT was made - glad we didn’t have to do it.
Ghost Recon (2001) runs perfectly through proton on my linux desktop. I still fire it up from time to time.
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 evidence of that.
Sometimes it’s nice to just unwind by playing a game with little to no pressure. You pick it up and drop it at your leisure. The only downside is they can turn into huge time sinks as they don’t have a clear “The End” to them.
RRT2 has it scenarios like Hell or High Water where you have fill in a giant crater with cement by orchestrating trains before ocean levels rise or just sandbox play building railways buying up business and watching connected cities boom. Always loved using cheats to make all competitors trains break down then take over their bankrupt company.
SimCopter and Streets of Sim City had missions/scenarios. Or you could just go fly/drive around any SimCity2000 map.
Remember a SimCopter cheat would essentially nuke the city and set everything in fire.
And Street let you blow up buildings by adding weapons to your car.
RollerCoaster Tycoon was the last of its kind [video] (242 points, 7 months ago)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42346463
[1] https://x.com/hilkojj/status/1950872926385037339
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroProse#Brand_revival_(2018...
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
https://www.chrissawyergames.com/feature4.htm