Pizza Tycoon

aka: Pizza Connection
Moby ID: 1827
DOS Specs
Buy on Windows
$0.59 new on Steam
Included in

Description official descriptions

Pizza Tycoon is a strategy game where you are an aspiring pizza chef, who wants to start the best pizza chain in the world. You begin by choosing a character you want to be (they differ in appearance and abilities, but the most important factor is the amount of money they have at the start).

Then you choose one of the cities in the USA or Europe, where you will rent the building that will become your first pizza restaurant. Before you open it, however, you have to buy furniture, decor and floors (there's a huge choice); hire some cooks and waiters; add some pizzas to your menu, and buy ingredients (you can buy at various shops, which offer various quality of the ingredients). Once this is all ready, you can open your first restaurant and then advertise it via fliers, billboards, newspaper or TV ads.

Creating your own pizzas, either to include into your menu or to take part in pizza-making competitions, is an important part of the game. You begin with an empty dough, and you're free to add a lot of various vegetables, meat, fruits or herb onto it. Remember that various people like various ingredients - if your restaurant is in a district populated mostly by kids, you can expect that a pizza made of sweet things will be popular. Also, specific ingredients rise and fall in popularity; if the newspaper announces that pineapples are bad for health, then sales of your Pineapple Pizza might plummet!

But while earning money as a honest citizen can be fun, it's even more exciting to get involved with the Underworld and buy weapons to devastate your competitor's restaurant, or do missions for the Mafia (which usually involve picking up something at a specific place at a specific time, and bringing it somewhere else at a different time). But beware, as this can bring you problems, either from the law or from the Mafia itself.

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Credits (DOS version)

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Idea and Outline
Programming
Graphics
Sound
Maps
Characters
Newspaper Reports
Special Animation
  • Jaime
  • Cania
Main Tester
Testers
PC Conversion
PC Graphics
Producer
Graphic Artists
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 74% (based on 19 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.6 out of 5 (based on 46 ratings with 1 reviews)

Cowabunga!

The Good
When this game was released the vast amount of useless tycoon-games had yet to invade the market. Pizza Tycoon felt fresh and new and exciting. When you bought the game you recieved a thick manual and a little recipee book you needed in order to make "correct" standard pizzas. This was in a way a copy protection, since no visitors came to your restaurant if you didn't have a few standards on the menu. I liked that there was a mix between the customer's need for standard pizzas and your own creations, preferrably following the current pizza trends. The game was complex, with trends, maffia, advertising, cooking competitions and all sorts of things to do.You could even make some real good money trading in "ice cream"(weapons). If you did good you could even become a godfather in the criminal world and a real tycoon in the business world (although it was a lot easier to become a godfather than to rise to fame in the business world.) It was fun hiring and training staff, and brining sleazy government officials to come and award your restaurants stars. I also liked that you could open restaurants in several cities, including Stockholm, which was nice for me as I'm Swedish. There is also a very silly but somewhat entertaining humour throughout the game which I liked. A complex and fun game.

The Bad
Pizza Tycoon is at first overwhelmingly difficult. It is very hard to get the business going. Everything is expensive and everything is time consuming. You don't have time for much until the working day is over. There is also a bit too much micro-management, such as signing good deals with grocers to get good, cheap ingredients for you pizzas. This is quite time consuming and not much fun at all. You can leave that to the managers of the restaurants but a good manager costs a lot of money so it will take quite a whíle before you can afford one that is good enough. Also, it is a bit too easy to make money on crime. It is very easy to make vast amounts of money smuggling weapons, but it is far too difficult to make money just selling pizzas. A little more balance, and definitely a bit more forgiving difficulty would have been preferred. As it is, to actually run the restaurants is a bit too hard for my liking.

The Bottom Line
Very difficult but complex and awarding tycoon game. Fun and challenging.

DOS · by Joakim Kihlman (231) · 2004

Discussion

Subject By Date
Modern games similar to Pizza Tycoon merrick79 (5) Aug 16, 2011

Trivia

Amiga version

Although the English version was reviewed by British magazines and the pictures contained English texts (CU Amiga (June 1995) and The One #80), no English version was ever officially released. The game for Amiga is available only in German language.

Art style

The original European version, Pizza Connection, features a lot of characters drawn in the style of the cartoonist Don Martin (known from the MAD magazine). However, when Microprose licensed the game for the US release, they wished to avoid a lawsuit and so had their artists draw new heads for all these characters. Most of the new head graphics were created by the artist Terry Greer. They include caricatures of famous people, such as Abraham Lincoln or Ronald Reagan, as well as more bizarre faces such as an alien or a fly. The entire collection of the new heads can be viewed on Terry Greer's website.

Life insurance

Life Insurance is completely useless. You can't die in the game, and even if you could, once the game is ended, you have no heirs to receive the cash.

Stock

After one year and two years respective playing, new stock companies are introduced to the game.

Awards

  • Amiga Joker
    • Issue 02/1995 – Best Simulation in 1994 (Readers' Vote)
  • Computer Gaming World
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) – #34 Worst Game of All Time
    • November 1996 (15th anniversary issue) –#15 Worst Back Story of All Time

Title theme

The intro tune is taken from "Škoda lásky", better known in the English-speaking world as "Beer Barrel Polka".

Information also contributed by Vertigo Acidburn

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Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 1827
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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Julian McKenzie.

Linux, Windows, Macintosh added by Cavalary. Amiga added by Xoleras.

Additional contributors: shanr porter, Vertigo Acidburn, Jornand de Buisonjé, Havoc Crow, Patrick Bregger, mailmanppa.

Game added June 28, 2000. Last modified February 16, 2024.