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Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon

aka: Golden Age of Railroad, Tielu Daheng

Description official description

With $100000 in the bank after taking out loans and selling stocks, it's time to start a railroad! Choose from 4 scenarios across two continents with randomly generated resources, and design your own railroad that moves people and goods across the country. Use the revenue to continue expanding, while keeping control of your company and appeasing your stock holders with growth and revenues. Play the stock market with company assets. Drive your competitors out of business with buyouts and rate wars. Multiple types of resources to carry (roughly grouped as slow freight, fast freight, passengers, mail) and convert, own facilities to maximize profit (buy a steel mill and the conversion from iron ore to steel makes money for YOU). Use the latest available technology to your advantage (new locomotives). Your objective is to retire with a huge bonus (based on your company's assets) and become the President or the Prime Minister (depending on which continent).

The game is essentially a bird's-eye-view real-time strategy game with aspects of building and stock market manipulation. Each fiscal period is 2-years, which corresponds to 1-day of track time. Build different sizes of stations to take care of different local needs, create trains that switch consists at different stations and maximize throughput. Upgrade/retire/modify trains as times change. The faster the trains arrive, the more money they earn. Multiple options will keep you busy as each game is different.

Spellings

  • Sid Meier's レイルロードタイクーン - Japanese spelling
  • 铁路大亨 - Simplified Chinese spelling

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (DOS version)

23 People · View all

Original Concept
Design
Programming
Graphics
Music / Sound Programming
Music Composition
Quality Assurance
Manual text
Direction & Design
Technical Illustrations
Screen Shot Illustrations
Pen & Ink Illustrations
Layout
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Discussion

Subject User Date
Have media; trying to figure out edition Ryan Armstrong (4990) 2017-12-15 07:58:04

Trivia

1001 Video Games

Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon appears in the book 1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die by General Editor Tony Mott.

1830

Railroad Tycoon was inspired by the Avalon Hill boardgame 1830. SimTex later adapted 1830 for Avalon Hill. Not long after, SimTex was acquired by MicroProse, and became MicroProse Texas.

Deluxe edition

In 1993 MicroProse released a Deluxe version, which added higher resolution screen, support for more trains, and more scenarios.

Freeware release

The entire game was released for a download to promote Railroad Tycoon 3. The link. http://www.2kgames.com/railroads/railroads.html.

Keypad

The Amiga version was one of the few non-Flight-Sim games to use the Numeric Keypad significantly - which unfortunately meant that it couldn't be played on the Amiga 600 model, which was launched in the UK in 1992 (one of three entry-level Amigas launched in little over a year!), and had no keypad in the interest of saving space and cost. Subsequent budget reissues of the game did not resolve this issue.

Title

The game was originally titled Golden Age of Railroads. Then MicroProse decided it doesn't emphasize the business aspects, and changed the name to the present form.

Awards

  • Computer Gaming World
    • September 1990 (Issue #74) – Overall Game of the Year
    • April 1992 (Issue #93) – Introduced into the Hall of Fame
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) - #41 overall in the “150 Best Games of All Time” list
  • EMAP Image's Golden Joystick 1991
    • April 1991: PC Game of the Year
  • GameStar (Germany)
    • Issue 12/1999 - #27 in the "100 Most Important PC Games of the Nineties" ranking
  • Power Play
    • Issue 01/1991 - Best Computer Game in 1990 (DOS version)
    • Issue 01/1991 - Best Strategy Game in 1990 (DOS version)
    • Issue 01/1991 - Best Game Idea in 1990
  • ST Format
    • January 1993 (issue #42) - #50 in '50 finest Atari ST games of all time' list

Information also contributed by Kasey Chang, Martin Smith, PCGamer77 and Scott Monster

Related Games

Railroad Tycoon II
Released 1998 on Windows, PlayStation, 1999 on Linux
Railroad Tycoon 3
Released 2003 on Windows, 2004 on Macintosh
Sid Meier's Colonization
Released 1994 on DOS, 2012 on Windows, 2014 on Linux...
Sid Meier's Civilization IV: Complete
Released 2007 on Windows
Railroad Tycoon II: The Second Century
Released 1999 on Windows, Macintosh
Sid Meier's Civilization III: Complete
Released 2004 on Windows, 2006 on Macintosh
Sid Meier's Civilization: Revolution
Released 2008 on Nintendo DS
Sid Meier's Gettysburg!
Released 1997 on Windows

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 70

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Brian Hirt.

Amiga added by Rebound Boy. Atari ST added by Kabushi. Macintosh added by Pseudo_Intellectual. FM Towns added by Terok Nor. PC-98 added by Unicorn Lynx.

Additional contributors: Andrew Grasmeder, Rebound Boy, Kasey Chang, Unicorn Lynx, Martin Smith, Patrick Bregger, Rik Hideto, Jo ST, FatherJack.

Game added March 3rd, 1999. Last modified May 1st, 2023.