RollerCoaster Tycoon

One of the first scenarios has a pre-made rollercoaster as the onyl ride.

The management sim is a well-established genre. Starting with Sim City there have been many variations. The first game to make a marked variation on this theme was 1994's Theme Park from Bullfrog. These games started the ball rolling and many companies have jumped on this bandwagon, not least Bullfrog with many Theme park follow-ups. Everything can be managed nowadays - from a restaurant over an airport to the Moon. Infogrames are getting in first with the Xbox management sims.

Not just roller coasters

It's not just rollercoasters. Sedate rides are available too.

Although the game's name puts the focus on the roller coasters, they aren't the whole game. RollerCoaster Tycoon revolves around managing a complete theme park with goal driven progression. You start off with a bare plot of land onto which you build and manage a theme park. The game will give you a goal to complete (such as have 750 people in the park after two years). When the time limit is up or the goal is otherwise achieved you can move on to the next scenario that might be another empty plot or it might be a small-established park. Either way you'll have a similar goal and similar rides available to you.

Park Life

All of the management options appear in their own screen. Don't open too many because it quickly becomes overwhelming.

Management options are limited to prevent overwhelming the gamer. The emphasis of this game is on fun rather than micro-management. You choose which rides to buy, where to place them and construct the paths, and you can place trees and other scenery to brighten things up a bit. When you place a shop in the park you can set the price of the goods it sells.

Finally you must manage the staff. You are in charge of the hiring and firing and setting zones that they patrol. If you get it right then the park will run itself and you can sit back and watch the cash pile up until you discover a new ride.

Taking control

Financial information helps you judge how the customers are responding to your park.

The game is controlled using a combination of the two thumb sticks. The left moves the cursor around and the right scrolls the screen. This scheme works well and the cursor can be moved precisely around the screen making selecting a specific visitor, employee or ride easy. Menu selection is similarly controlled.

Taken for a ride

Roller coasters can grow to be pretty huge.

Whilst the focus is on the whole park and not just the roller coasters, when you add a roller coaster you have a wealth of options to create the ride. You construct the ride from sections of track. These sections include rises and falls, chain pulled sections and tunnels. This allows you to create a completely unique and individual ride. You can, of course, forgo this and create a standard roller coaster designed by the developers.

There are many different types of roller coaster including wooden ones, steel ones and suspended ones. A host of other rides are available, too, ranging from merry-go-rounds through to water slides and 3D cinemas. Unfortunately there is no option to ride on your creations.

Expanding the park

You can manage parks based on real theme parks. Here we see Blackpool Pleasure Beach.

The game comes with enough scenarios to keep you going for a long time. These range from a flat, blank canvas to parks which have been started for you, built on hilly terrain. You can't build on a slope so you must first flatten the land around these areas to allow you to place your rides. This consumes your money and slows down your development. Scenarios that have been included in other versions of the game are all present in the Xbox version together with the Loopy Landscapes and Added Attractions expansion packs.

A collection of real parks is also included. These are game parks modelled on real theme parks (such as Alton Towers), which have been faithfully recreated in the game world to give gamers a chance to manage these parks themselves.

No innovation

Choosing rides is done with a standard pop-up window with icons for each ride.

The game is viewed from an isometric viewpoint and is divided into a grid. This makes the landscape rather jagged. Hills are pointy and not smooth as is expected from modern games. The graphics, generally, look much the same as the graphics of any other game in this genre and don't seem to have progressed over the graphics of older examples. It's not that they're bad; it's just that they don't show us anything new or innovative. And this is the overriding feeling of playing this game. It feels too much like every other recent game in this style.

The sound is functional but again not innovative. Generic fairground sounds and crowd sounds are played throughout with the music changing depending on which ride you are viewing at the time. This has all been done before in other games such as Theme Park Worlds.

Rollercoaster Tycoon is a fine example of the genre and will please fans no end but we've seen it all before. The level of management available; roller coaster design; the range of rides and shops available; viewing visitors happiness level, its all been done. This game does everything right, the graphics are fine, the sound is OK and the game plays fine, but the problem is that it does nothing new. This game should satisfy any budding theme park owners but those who are more casual fans who perhaps own other games in the genre should think carefully before purchasing this.