Flashback: Building the Future

As a child, there were very few games I played, most of which were on my GameCube. I lead a very protected video game life, not playing any games with guns until 12. But, before any of these events, I was a hardcore Nintendo fan. My favorite game was anything that had a Pokémon in it, and I thought a computer was something that had the internet on it. This changed when I turned seven, and I got an unexpected gift, Rollercoaster Tycoon 2.

Chris Sawyer, one of my all-time greatest  heroes, created the successful series about building your own Amusement park, and as any kid can tell you, they would die to own one. As I had never left the confines of the local ‘Adventureland’ I was amazed to see such rides from the Six Flags Park. I still remembering the shivers of excitement build the Great American Scream Machine in my first park. The entire point to the game was to build the greatest thrill park of all time, in different locations with different challenges. RCT 2 has a tiered system for challenges, starting with the easy parks going up to the EXTREME parks. There are also the options to control pre-made Six Flags parks, or even build your own Six Flags Park, with a very large amount of control: from placement of rides, to building them from scratch, many types of food stalls, and the ability to check with your park guests, seeing how they think of your park. Your park is given a rating, from 0 to 999, based on the happiness, amount, and overall build of your park.

You can get awards for best food, best rollercoasters, or dirtiest park in the country. While you run your park, you hire Employees (paid a monthly salary) to do your bidding, there are Handymen (the ones who clean, mow, and clean up the eventual spew from everyone riding your intense rides too much) Engineers (who fix your rides, and can check up on them to keep them in top condition) Entertainers (who keep your park guests happy by wearing humiliating costumes) and Security Guards (who make sure the snot nosed brats in your park don’t break the benches you just put in.) The next point of the game is all about layout, and debt management. As most rides cost millions of dollars, Sawyer lowered the costs of rides from multi-millions to multi- thousands. For example, you can build a giant, looping rollercoaster, built with thousands of tons of steel and stretches over two miles for around $45,000. You can either charger per ride, or charge a flat fee for entrance. You also get money from your sales of food, souvenirs, and various other objects. You can also choose to take out a loan, set to a pre-determined amount, and use that to build your offering to the amusement gods, but remember, you’ll owe a certain percentage of that back per month.

RCT 2 is the perfect example of how you can get sucked into a game for an entire day, and then wonders why you haven’t blinked in 4 hours. Its playability is similar to the Sims, where you just keep going and going, not knowing where to stop, and what to do next.  And when the tens of thousands of dollars in your pocket, and just can’t think of where to put your next great hit, you can just start anew, coming up with new designs, and coming up with new ways to entertain yourself for hours. In the end, I’ve found myself keeping this disc safe for almost a decade now, installing it onto 4 different computers, and probably logging more hours on it that I have spent all my time combined on the Wii. If your ever in the mood for a retro-feeling bit of building nostalgia, try this one on for size, and download it off most sites for about ten bucks.