Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon

The Good
Where to begin... This game is a jewel, and you really only begin to appreciate its depth at the higher difficulty levels. On the higher difficulty levels, you have to manage a complex economy. For example a city will only pay you to deliver hops if there happens to be a brewery within the city limits.

Or, you could build a brewery in the city, if you had a large source of hops nearby, waiting to be exploited... but that'll cost you a lot of cash up front. Decisions, decisions. And of course, ANY old city will pay for the beer that you deliver, right? It's so wonderful, taking coal to one city to make steel, delivering the steel to yet another city to make manufactured goods, then delivering the goods to a third city for the final money-making run.

Then there's the constant concern about purchasing back enough of your company stock that the other tycoons don't get majority shareholder status of your company and run you out of town.

Then too, you have to worry about them tying their railroads into your cities and starting a fare war. You lose a major economic engine if you lose a major city, and then you are sunk!

There is incredible replayability to this game because although the maps are the same, the size of the cities and placement of minor impediments to building tracks vary. The stock market goes up and down like a yo-yo, forcing you to make economic decisions about borrowing money and paying off debt.

There are four starting scenarios: England, the first trains, Europe, pre WW I, Easter US with the first trains, and the Western US Post civil War. Each requires a different strategy to succeed, and strategies that work well in the opening game begin to fail in the mid game and are liabilities at the end-game.

The Bad
I liked everything about this game. I'd like to see a nearly identical game based on Windows, with cleaner graphics - and nothing else added or subtracted. That's an endorsement for a world-class game.

The Bottom Line
A really cool blend of trains, economics, and markets. Play at your own risk - you may never spend your free time the same again!

The Good
Freedom of action - once the basic features of a scenario are set (random resource locations, player-chosen difficulty level), it's all up to you as a player to decide what to do - which cities to connect, what locomotives and cars to use, what cargos to carry, when to borrow and pay back loans, when to buy and sell stock, on and on.

Building something - it's like a construction set or model railroad. It's satisfying to start off small, have it work and then make it bigger.

Replayability - once a scenario (100 years of game time) is finished, the immediate question is "could I do better?". And it's always fun to try. The random resource locations make each scenario sufficiently different that it really does feel like a new game (so you can't simply make the same decisions you did before), but not so different that you can't use general techniques you've picked up.

The Bad
Copy protection - when the game first loads it shows a picture of a locomotive and asks for its name. All the pictures and names are shown together in the manual, so you have to have the manual (so presumably you have a legal copy). But come on, it's over ten years later. The game hasn't been in stores for years. The company isn't making any revenue off of it in any case. Why do we still have to deal with this?

The limitation of 32 - you can have at most 32 trains running at one time (but I want more!). You can have at most 32 stations on one railroad (but I want more!). Once you reach these limits you can't make your railroad any bigger. Past this point the only way to increase your wealth (ie., your score) is to play the stock market. In one sense that's the most effective way to run up your score, since as time goes by the stock market valuation of your railroad can exceed its yearly operating revenue by quite a large margin. But after several years (real ones, not game ones) I ran into the final limitation of 32 - a railroad can have a maximum value of a little over $32 million (probably $32,768,000). Past that point the value is interpreted as a negative value, and the game abruptly declares that your railroad is bankrupt and you have "lost". And that is pretty much the only reason why I've stopped playing it - the "can I do better?" question has definitively been answered "No".

The Bottom Line
A game for people who like to plan and build things, who enjoy watching something grow and prosper strictly because of their own efforts. Not for those with short attention spans.

There are built-in limitations in the game (including one outright bug), but most players will never reach them without the performance improvement that comes only from long and repeated experience with it.

The Good
Well, I honestly wasn't that interested of this game what it happened to pass into my hands from a fellow gaming pal. Just another sim. Same old same old.

Boy, was I wrong!

I sweat more playing this game, than playing shooter games! If there was one game without doubt that needs cause for strategy and far planning, THIS would be that game. Making money is one thing, but maintaining it is another...

This game offers an Artificial Intelligence opponents that just won't quit! And they made it in away that they weren't irritating either...just tough enough for it to be still a joyable challenge. But not without hard work of course!

The game is about being the #1 Railroad company in the region. This is can be done by either 2 ways: First, by ambitiously expanding your railroad company by building railroads from town to town. Second, by geniusly playing your luck and skill through the stock market, ultimately guarding your behind from being taken over by force or on the otherhand conducting hostile take-overs on competiting railroad companies.

From those two descriptions above, you will learn from this game that one skill alone isn't enough to survive in the Capitalist world of unforgiving competition. This is also the first game that taught me about the Stock Market. Some information of which was more invaluable than what they taught me at Law School!

This game isn't just about creating railroads. This game in a mirco point of view is also about running a country! Railroads companies need passengers and goods that pay hard cash for ticket sales. Waiting around for a town to grow wouldn't pay your back your investors any time soon, and the bank's interests are already killing you slowly. Instead of waiting, develop the town! Create factories, advertise and help the city grow! The greater it grows, the more passengers there are, and the more products it needs!

One of the greatest challenges offered by this game is the Railroad War! (There's a particular name for it but me forgots!) A railroad war occurs when you build a track to your opponent (vice verca), indicating control over a town where that rail road is closest to. When this happens, each railroad company has to deliver as many passengers and products to and from that town. The more exchange that occurs, the town hall may consider to vote in your favor (or against you if you don't deliver enought). South Africa (or was it America?) was my favorite region to play.

Basically, this game teaches you to think fast and play seriously. In addition, offering invaluable historical information of past railroad tycoons and developement of railroads in various companies.

The Bad
Hmm..., I don't recall very well about what I didn't like about the game. The only think worth noting is that the stock market can be very frustraiting. That probably due to my lack of skill...not the game itself.

The Bottom Line
In every sense of the word: A Railroad Tycoon. A sim at its best!