6 ms·

Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)

104 points by cybersoyuz 1y ago

NegativeLatency 1y ago
Loved playing this game as a kid, Open Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 has been great for some recent replays: https://openrct2.io https://openrct2.io
- antithesizer 1y ago
  Thank you for this
felineflock 1y ago
Sid Meier founded MicroProse and started with the Tycoon genre with Railroad Tycoon having been inspired by SimCity and Empire.
- Narishma 1y ago
  Your comment makes it sound like he started the company to make Tycoon games, but those came like a decade later.
  - felineflock 1y ago
    That is an uncharitable interpretation. None of that should be controversial.
ravenstine 1y ago
Man, I can still remember the magic I felt when first discovering that game on my cousin's laptop in 1999. Such a simple game yet allowed enough creativity for an 10 year old boy to be imaginative. There does come a point where there isn't much else to do with the game once you get good enough at it, so I started having fun doing "experiments". One of the things I did in RCT was build "prisons" where I leveraged things like the carousel to work as a one-way door into the park to allow guests to come in but prevent them from leaving; it lead to a barren cement building with a turbo drop coaster designed to be intentionally dangerous so I could "execute" prisoners. There was puke everywhere after a while. What a disturbing mind I had.
- krogenx 1y ago
  Similar things come to my mind with The Sims. Once the game was “over” (maybe you’ve reached the top job) you could still do all sorts of things… Some of them a bit masochistic.
- ARob109 1y ago
  I always used the Do Not Enter marquee signs such that once guests entered the park they could never leave. Great for helping meet the total park population scenarios.
  - Doxin 1y ago
    If you got enough people into a 2-long segment of footpath with "do not enter" signs containing them you can place a third "do not enter sign" in the middle, and cause all the people to explode from the path and onto the grass.
- diggan 1y ago
  > There was puke everywhere after a while. What a disturbing mind I had. I think you were not the only one exploring those sides of those sort of games! I don't remember if it was SimCity 2000 or 3000 that I played the most, but I remember some of these tycoon/management/simulation games let our destructive sides really come out by letting us unleash volcanoes, tornadoes, earthquakes and similar, all at the same time :)
reactordev 1y ago
MicroProse games in the 90s were next level. So many milsim games where you got to experience a crude 90s graphics recreation of being a service member shooting bogies. I never could complete a mission of F-117A Steal Fighter on Mac System 9. However, RCT was a “Minecraft” of its day without the support of the community. It was huge. Everyone was playing it. I wish modding was a thing back then. We would have gone crazy but then when you read how RCT was made - glad we didn’t have to do it.
- RUnconcerned 1y ago
  I'm not sure RCT ever had a modding community, but it's predecessor, Transport Tycoon Deluxe, did. TTDPatch[0] had several gameplay and quality of life improvements, but it was eventually superseded by OpenTTD[1]. [0] https://www.ttdpatch.net/ https://www.ttdpatch.net/ [1] https://www.openttd.org/ https://www.openttd.org/
  - chrisco255 1y ago
    There is OpenRCT2: https://openrct2.io/ https://openrct2.io/
  - dmitshur 1y ago
    If anyone’s curious to see what a lossless 6016x3384 screenshot of OpenTDD would look like: https://dmitri.shuralyov.com/temp/6K/OpenTTD.png https://dmitri.shuralyov.com/temp/6K/OpenTTD.png (25.6 MB)
- LeftHandPath 1y ago
  I really miss some of the companies from that era... Red Storm Entertainment, Tom Clancy's vision, comes to mind. The early Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six games had a dedication to immersion that their modern counterparts totally lack. Ghost Recon (2001) runs perfectly through proton on my linux desktop. I still fire it up from time to time.
  - diggan 1y ago
    At our local lans in the early 2000s, Rainbow Six Rogue Spear was probably the most popular game we played, and still there doesn't seem to be any tactical shooters like that available today, that focuses on realism over cosmetics and arcade-mechanics. Also makes me think of the countless hours of fun Westwood Studios provided me with in my youth, real shame they didn't get to survive longer :/
CGMthrowaway 1y ago
I paid a guy at school $10 for a burned CD ROM of this game in 6th grade. Best money I ever spent
jonathanlydall 1y ago
The author wishes there was more of a storyline to the game. Which is absolutely fine as it’s their preference. But it made me think of how Minecraft has almost no story (well, something was added later but it’s optional to follow it) and perhaps that contributed to its major success. Decent sandbox games don’t need stories if the mechanics are satisfying enough and games like Sawyer’s Tycoons and Minecraft are evidence of that. Sometimes it’s nice to just unwind by playing a game with little to no pressure. You pick it up and drop it at your leisure. The only downside is they can turn into huge time sinks as they don’t have a clear “The End” to them.
- SnowProblem 1y ago
  Yeah, the author wants a story saying there wasn't enough continuity between scenarios or motivation to continue, but that was a non-issue for me personally. It's been many, many years, but my memory is that while RCT didn't have a completely open sandbox like TT to boot, each scenario was effectively its own sandbox with restrictions that made them interesting. New rides became available you progressed, and each park enabled creativity in different ways. When you finished all of the scenarios, I believe there was a completely open sandbox that became available, and that was like a nice reward. There really was no need for a story, and I think that would have detracted.
  - diggan 1y ago
    > It's been many, many years, but my memory is that while RCT didn't have a completely open sandbox like TT to boot, each scenario was effectively its own sandbox with restrictions that made them interesting Also a very long time ago I played it, but I seem to remember that you could continue any scenario for as long time as you wanted after completing it, you didn't need to exit the scenario once completed. Maybe I misremember? If not, that'd basically mean every scenario is also a sandbox once the goals were completed.
- m463 1y ago
  Story of my life. Literally. (wonder how many people, especially engineers share this, uh storyline... Just get up, build things)
jader201 1y ago
Related: RollerCoaster Tycoon was the last of its kind [video] (242 points, 7 months ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42346463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42346463
bpierre 1y ago
Somewhat relevant: I’ve been following the developer of Car Park Capital on twitter [1], a “retro tycoon game” in their own words. Yesterday, the current MicroProse [2] announced they would publish it. [1] https://x.com/hilkojj/status/1950872926385037339 https://x.com/hilkojj/status/1950872926385037339 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroProse#Brand_revival_(2018%E2%80%93present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroProse#Brand_revival_(2018...
- YesBox 1y ago
  There's also the city builder Metropolis 1998 [1]. Similar RollerCoaster Tycoon aesthetic [1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/2287430/Metropolis_1998/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2287430/Metropolis_1998/ [2] (I'm the dev)
Lammy 1y ago
> Written by Sawyer in pure, ultra-efficient Intel assembly language — an anomaly by that time Not mentioned in the article, but this did allow for a port of the game to the OG XBOX (733 MHz PentiumⅢ box) way back in 2003, long before the game's eventual remake as RCT Classic for ARM etc in 2017. Interesting that the XBOX port is RCT1+expansions even though it came out after RCT2 did on PC, maybe due to lesser requirements or probably just to avoid cannibalizing RCT2 PC sales and to double-dip people who had already paid for RCT1 PC: https://youtu.be/Vtincfkl8KY?t=75 https://youtu.be/Vtincfkl8KY?t=75 Notably one of the XBOX games that has never been backwards compatible lol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games_compatible_with_Xbox_360#R https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games_compatible_... RCT1 was one of those games that I spent entire summers playing as a kid (see also: SimCity 3000), entirely offline because tying up the house's single phone line with the modem wasn't allowed during the day. Even though RCT2 was objectively the better game it felt like an aesthetic downgrade, and I actively hated RCT3 and still do. RCT1's vibes are immaculate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BitorD-HVuQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BitorD-HVuQ
- dwroberts 1y ago
  > but this did allow for a port of the game to the OG XBOX (733 MHz PentiumⅢ box) way back in 2003 Not sure if the clock speed is just for reference or emphasis re: efficiency, but RCT1 will in fact happily run on a Pentium 90 (which is still mind blowing to me given the scope of the game)
  - Lammy 1y ago
    Just for disambiguation to emphasize that I'm talking about the Intel-based console, because the naming scheme of the later Microsoft consoles makes it easy to confuse “Xbox One” with the OG one. I spent most of my time playing RCT 1 and 2 on a 400 MHz PⅡ, and their performance was indeed flawless :)
  - pengaru 1y ago
    Having cut my teeth writing asm on 386/486 in ms-dos, these comments are kind of hilarious to me because Pentium is well into "you can write most of it in C" territory. By the P2 era (97-98), especially as consoles show up, assembly's not desirable at all. Pmode/w was released in 97 which speaks to the demand for a Watcom C/C++ protected mode extender at the time...
jvanderbot 1y ago
If you liked micro-prose, they are back in full form with Highfleet. Maybe not "back", but it's one of the most engaging engineering / action games I've played and it has a very microprose feel
- lomlobon 1y ago
  Well, if it has a very microprose feel then it was by luck, because they picked it up late in development and it's a single russian guy's brainchild. He also made hammerfight, another excellent (if janky as hell) game. Highfleet really is a great game though.
  - ranger207 1y ago
    Nu-MicroProse has been seeking out games similar in spirit to those published by old MicroProse trying to become the continuation of what it used to be. It might have been luck that there was a guy developing that kind of game at the time, or it might have been that there's a growing desire for that sort of game that MicroProse is coming along at the right time to pick up

104 points by cybersoyuz 1y ago

Loved playing this game as a kid, Open Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 has been great for some recent replays: https://openrct2.io https://openrct2.io

antithesizer 1y ago
Thank you for this

felineflock 1y ago

Sid Meier founded MicroProse and started with the Tycoon genre with Railroad Tycoon having been inspired by SimCity and Empire.

Narishma 1y ago
Your comment makes it sound like he started the company to make Tycoon games, but those came like a decade later.
- felineflock 1y ago
  That is an uncharitable interpretation. None of that should be controversial.

ravenstine 1y ago

Man, I can still remember the magic I felt when first discovering that game on my cousin's laptop in 1999. Such a simple game yet allowed enough creativity for an 10 year old boy to be imaginative. There does come a point where there isn't much else to do with the game once you get good enough at it, so I started having fun doing "experiments". One of the things I did in RCT was build "prisons" where I leveraged things like the carousel to work as a one-way door into the park to allow guests to come in but prevent them from leaving; it lead to a barren cement building with a turbo drop coaster designed to be intentionally dangerous so I could "execute" prisoners. There was puke everywhere after a while. What a disturbing mind I had.

krogenx 1y ago
Similar things come to my mind with The Sims. Once the game was “over” (maybe you’ve reached the top job) you could still do all sorts of things… Some of them a bit masochistic.
ARob109 1y ago
I always used the Do Not Enter marquee signs such that once guests entered the park they could never leave. Great for helping meet the total park population scenarios.
- Doxin 1y ago
  If you got enough people into a 2-long segment of footpath with "do not enter" signs containing them you can place a third "do not enter sign" in the middle, and cause all the people to explode from the path and onto the grass.
diggan 1y ago
> There was puke everywhere after a while. What a disturbing mind I had. I think you were not the only one exploring those sides of those sort of games! I don't remember if it was SimCity 2000 or 3000 that I played the most, but I remember some of these tycoon/management/simulation games let our destructive sides really come out by letting us unleash volcanoes, tornadoes, earthquakes and similar, all at the same time :)

reactordev 1y ago

MicroProse games in the 90s were next level. So many milsim games where you got to experience a crude 90s graphics recreation of being a service member shooting bogies. I never could complete a mission of F-117A Steal Fighter on Mac System 9. However, RCT was a “Minecraft” of its day without the support of the community. It was huge. Everyone was playing it. I wish modding was a thing back then. We would have gone crazy but then when you read how RCT was made - glad we didn’t have to do it.

RUnconcerned 1y ago
I'm not sure RCT ever had a modding community, but it's predecessor, Transport Tycoon Deluxe, did. TTDPatch[0] had several gameplay and quality of life improvements, but it was eventually superseded by OpenTTD[1]. [0] https://www.ttdpatch.net/ https://www.ttdpatch.net/ [1] https://www.openttd.org/ https://www.openttd.org/
- chrisco255 1y ago
  There is OpenRCT2: https://openrct2.io/ https://openrct2.io/
- dmitshur 1y ago
  If anyone’s curious to see what a lossless 6016x3384 screenshot of OpenTDD would look like: https://dmitri.shuralyov.com/temp/6K/OpenTTD.png https://dmitri.shuralyov.com/temp/6K/OpenTTD.png (25.6 MB)
LeftHandPath 1y ago
I really miss some of the companies from that era... Red Storm Entertainment, Tom Clancy's vision, comes to mind. The early Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six games had a dedication to immersion that their modern counterparts totally lack. Ghost Recon (2001) runs perfectly through proton on my linux desktop. I still fire it up from time to time.
- diggan 1y ago
  At our local lans in the early 2000s, Rainbow Six Rogue Spear was probably the most popular game we played, and still there doesn't seem to be any tactical shooters like that available today, that focuses on realism over cosmetics and arcade-mechanics. Also makes me think of the countless hours of fun Westwood Studios provided me with in my youth, real shame they didn't get to survive longer :/

CGMthrowaway 1y ago

I paid a guy at school $10 for a burned CD ROM of this game in 6th grade. Best money I ever spent

jonathanlydall 1y ago

The author wishes there was more of a storyline to the game. Which is absolutely fine as it’s their preference. But it made me think of how Minecraft has almost no story (well, something was added later but it’s optional to follow it) and perhaps that contributed to its major success. Decent sandbox games don’t need stories if the mechanics are satisfying enough and games like Sawyer’s Tycoons and Minecraft are evidence of that. Sometimes it’s nice to just unwind by playing a game with little to no pressure. You pick it up and drop it at your leisure. The only downside is they can turn into huge time sinks as they don’t have a clear “The End” to them.

SnowProblem 1y ago
Yeah, the author wants a story saying there wasn't enough continuity between scenarios or motivation to continue, but that was a non-issue for me personally. It's been many, many years, but my memory is that while RCT didn't have a completely open sandbox like TT to boot, each scenario was effectively its own sandbox with restrictions that made them interesting. New rides became available you progressed, and each park enabled creativity in different ways. When you finished all of the scenarios, I believe there was a completely open sandbox that became available, and that was like a nice reward. There really was no need for a story, and I think that would have detracted.
- diggan 1y ago
  > It's been many, many years, but my memory is that while RCT didn't have a completely open sandbox like TT to boot, each scenario was effectively its own sandbox with restrictions that made them interesting Also a very long time ago I played it, but I seem to remember that you could continue any scenario for as long time as you wanted after completing it, you didn't need to exit the scenario once completed. Maybe I misremember? If not, that'd basically mean every scenario is also a sandbox once the goals were completed.
m463 1y ago
Story of my life. Literally. (wonder how many people, especially engineers share this, uh storyline... Just get up, build things)

jader201 1y ago

Related: RollerCoaster Tycoon was the last of its kind [video] (242 points, 7 months ago) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42346463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42346463

bpierre 1y ago

Somewhat relevant: I’ve been following the developer of Car Park Capital on twitter [1], a “retro tycoon game” in their own words. Yesterday, the current MicroProse [2] announced they would publish it. [1] https://x.com/hilkojj/status/1950872926385037339 https://x.com/hilkojj/status/1950872926385037339 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroProse#Brand_revival_(2018%E2%80%93present) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroProse#Brand_revival_(2018...

YesBox 1y ago
There's also the city builder Metropolis 1998 [1]. Similar RollerCoaster Tycoon aesthetic [1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/2287430/Metropolis_1998/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/2287430/Metropolis_1998/ [2] (I'm the dev)

Lammy 1y ago

> Written by Sawyer in pure, ultra-efficient Intel assembly language — an anomaly by that time Not mentioned in the article, but this did allow for a port of the game to the OG XBOX (733 MHz PentiumⅢ box) way back in 2003, long before the game's eventual remake as RCT Classic for ARM etc in 2017. Interesting that the XBOX port is RCT1+expansions even though it came out after RCT2 did on PC, maybe due to lesser requirements or probably just to avoid cannibalizing RCT2 PC sales and to double-dip people who had already paid for RCT1 PC: https://youtu.be/Vtincfkl8KY?t=75 https://youtu.be/Vtincfkl8KY?t=75 Notably one of the XBOX games that has never been backwards compatible lol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games_compatible_with_Xbox_360#R https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games_compatible_... RCT1 was one of those games that I spent entire summers playing as a kid (see also: SimCity 3000), entirely offline because tying up the house's single phone line with the modem wasn't allowed during the day. Even though RCT2 was objectively the better game it felt like an aesthetic downgrade, and I actively hated RCT3 and still do. RCT1's vibes are immaculate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BitorD-HVuQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BitorD-HVuQ

dwroberts 1y ago
> but this did allow for a port of the game to the OG XBOX (733 MHz PentiumⅢ box) way back in 2003 Not sure if the clock speed is just for reference or emphasis re: efficiency, but RCT1 will in fact happily run on a Pentium 90 (which is still mind blowing to me given the scope of the game)
- Lammy 1y ago
  Just for disambiguation to emphasize that I'm talking about the Intel-based console, because the naming scheme of the later Microsoft consoles makes it easy to confuse “Xbox One” with the OG one. I spent most of my time playing RCT 1 and 2 on a 400 MHz PⅡ, and their performance was indeed flawless :)
- pengaru 1y ago
  Having cut my teeth writing asm on 386/486 in ms-dos, these comments are kind of hilarious to me because Pentium is well into "you can write most of it in C" territory. By the P2 era (97-98), especially as consoles show up, assembly's not desirable at all. Pmode/w was released in 97 which speaks to the demand for a Watcom C/C++ protected mode extender at the time...

jvanderbot 1y ago

If you liked micro-prose, they are back in full form with Highfleet. Maybe not "back", but it's one of the most engaging engineering / action games I've played and it has a very microprose feel

lomlobon 1y ago
Well, if it has a very microprose feel then it was by luck, because they picked it up late in development and it's a single russian guy's brainchild. He also made hammerfight, another excellent (if janky as hell) game. Highfleet really is a great game though.
- ranger207 1y ago
  Nu-MicroProse has been seeking out games similar in spirit to those published by old MicroProse trying to become the continuation of what it used to be. It might have been luck that there was a guy developing that kind of game at the time, or it might have been that there's a growing desire for that sort of game that MicroProse is coming along at the right time to pick up