RollerCoaster Tycoon

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
Everything! (well almost.)

The Bad
Stupid AI of the guests and workers.

The Bottom Line
If you like rollercoasters, amusment parks, theme parks, or sims, buy this game. Basicly you run a amusment park, building the rides, seting em' down, even for a few rides design them.
For all rides you design you have to make sure that the intesity rateing isn't too hi. Also you want exitment rating hi to get maximum profit.
This is also a business game.
Even if you don't like sims this game might make you an instant confert, I know, it happened to me!

The Good
Everything. From the moment I heard about RTC being released, something told me that this would be an incredible game. Taking its cues from Theme Park and Sim City, Roller Coaster Tycoon gives us a chance to design our own theme park, with so much to design with.

The graphics, although Isometric, are fantastic. Haunted houses, Ferris wheels, go kart tracks, and scenery are all produced very well. The animations get choppy on my P233 w/ 64 Meg RAM, but more so when I am zoomed in real close and with a LOT going on in the park.

The sound is fun and amazing. The sounds fade as you center your screen further from the park, and even slow down if a ride breaks down (listen to the Merry-go-round when it happens... the effect is really neat). Flushing Toilets, screams from coaster riders... it's pretty cool.

The game play is good. You can set prices for indiviual rides, the prices for food, souveniers, umbrellas, maps, etc. It seems like a lot to manage, but you have such a fun time playing you don't really notice it. Watching the costers run is also a great side-product of this, but not quite (I'll explain in a bit.)

The Bad
Although I love this game to death, I have a few dislikes.

1) As another reviewer said... There is no way on Earth that Maintenance men are that lazy. The constant task of cleaning up messes that they should be cleaning up in the first play really detracts from the whole game experience.

2) No Sandbox Mode. Railroad Tycoon II was great for the simple fact that you could build your railroad empire without worrying about scenario deadlines or running out of money. This game DESPARATELY needs a sandbox mode.

3) The game also needs a decent Coaster editor. Something so that when you want to build a coaster you can actually work on getting the physics and layout right BEFORE you commit ant real game-time into doing so. Would be nice to have so when it comes time to build that Batman the Ride -type ride, you can get it right the first time.

The Bottom Line
If you love roller coasters, pick this up. It's a great sim for people who really can't get into them. It's a sim at heart, but the theme-park cover is so fun, you won't even realize that this is really a sim game... Great fun!