RollerCoaster Tycoon

The Good
Must play game. Must play Game. Must play game. Must play Game. Must play Game...... Wow. Sorry about that I can only talk for a few minutes I have to get back to my game.

All kidding aside Rollercoaster Tycoon can be VERY addictive. This game really was genius. It has just the right ballance of all the important things. (1) Good Learing Curve. (2) Good Graphics. (3) ORGINAL thought. ie.. they didnt just copy the game from someone else. (4) game draws you in and doesnt let go. (5) Replayability (I can pick it up after not playing it for a month or two) (6) Depth of programing. a good example would be how much thought and feeling went into each stall and sound of the game. (7) It all comes together and is still fun to play. All too often a great idea and lots of hours of work are for not, because it didn't all come together into something that is fun to play.
This is the only game that my wife is addicted to. If you can make a game that she even likes then you have accomplished something. So this is a must for Women who are looking for a PC game to play but dont want to see naked women or blow up everything. (although my wife does like to throw guests into water when they get lost... someday that will be me)

The Bad
Well even this game does have parts that can be bad. The land controler is horrible. They need to take a note from Sim City 3000. Second where are my arcades and skeet ball games? You cant have a park without Skeetball! :-)

The Bottom Line
Overall this is a game the entire family can enjoy from sun up to sun down. They should give out a copy to everyone who buys a new PC.

The Good
This game has everything. If you want a realistic simulation of running your own amusement park, that also manages to be a heck of a lot of fun (I found myself playing this thing for 5 hours straight. Really), then Roller Coaster Tycoon is definitely for you. The detail to which the designers went through to make the simulation realistic is amazing... You can click on any one of the tiny little guests that enter your park, purchase your food and merchandise, and, of course, go on your rides until they throw up, and find out exactly what they're thinking, what they're carrying, and how much money they've spent. In addition, the ability to create your own track layouts is a lot of fun... You can make almost any kind of roller coaster you can imagine.

The Bad
I was frustrated by the inability to start your park completely from scratch. There's no way to create your own terrain, or buy your own land. You have to start from one of the precreated scenarios, and work towards a preset goal. Another thing I found annoying was the music... The same darn merry-go-round style organ music plays over and over and over, until it gets really irritating. Fortunately, it only happens when you move your screen near a merry-go-round.

The Bottom Line
A really spectacular game. Great graphics, and top notch gameplay combine to form the absolute best theme park simulation game of all time.

The Good
I normally hate this kind of game. I never liked any of the Sim games. This one grabbed me though. I think the management aspect of the game was easy enough to handle but still challenging enough to make it fun. The graphics and sound are nice and it ran well on my PII/233, even when I had an enourmous park with a million things going on at once. The rides were interesting and there were enough roller coaster designs to keep the game from getting stale. It's also kind of fun to make a deathtrap roller coaster that kills a few people every now and then. Though the physics of the game aren't perfect, it still takes things like gravity and speed into consideration. I also like the fact that you need to put a lot of bathrooms and garbage cans at the exits to the rollercoasters so people can throw up in them. Otherwise you get this gross little splotches on the pavement that never seem to get cleaned up.

The Bad
The perspective is a little skewed and at times it's hard to manipulate land when you accidentally lower it too far. Customers get lost much too easily and frankly, they're annoying when they whine about how they can't find the park exit. I like to think that in real life, someone just might figure out that the park exit is not going to magically appear in the 20 square foot area they refuse to leave. And in real life, maintenance men are not that lazy. They're probably teamsters but I am constantly having to make them clean the place up and it really distracts from the parts of the game that are fun. And the park guests are the biggest weenies I've ever seen. Sure the coasters look scary and I would never ride them in a million years, but don't you think that when you let someone design a rollercoaster that will never materialize in the real world, they're going to make it as scary as possible? Half of my coasters are never ridden because the guests are too chicken to get on.

The Bottom Line
I guess it would be best compared to a Sim game but I hate those and love this so draw your own conclusions. It's really like nothing else out there.