[HN Gopher] Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)
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Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)
Author : cybersoyuz
Score : 90 points
Date : 2025-08-01 16:10 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.filfre.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.filfre.net)
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Loved playing this game as a kid, Open Rollercoaster Tycoon 2 has
| been great for some recent replays: https://openrct2.io
| antithesizer wrote:
| Thank you for this
| felineflock wrote:
| Sid Meier founded MicroProse and started with the Tycoon genre
| with Railroad Tycoon having been inspired by SimCity and Empire.
| Narishma wrote:
| Your comment makes it sound like he started the company to make
| Tycoon games, but those came like a decade later.
| felineflock wrote:
| That is an uncharitable interpretation. None of that should
| be controversial.
| ravenstine wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| reactordev wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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/
|
| [1] https://www.openttd.org/
| chrisco255 wrote:
| There is OpenRCT2: https://openrct2.io/
| dmitshur wrote:
| If anyone's curious to see what a lossless 6016x3384
| screenshot of OpenTDD would look like:
|
| https://dmitri.shuralyov.com/temp/6K/OpenTTD.png (25.6 MB)
| LeftHandPath wrote:
| 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.
| CGMthrowaway wrote:
| I paid a guy at school $10 for a burned CD ROM of this game in
| 6th grade. Best money I ever spent
| jonathanlydall wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| m463 wrote:
| Story of my life. Literally.
|
| (wonder how many people, especially engineers share this, uh
| storyline... Just get up, build things)
| jdlshore wrote:
| I think his critique wasn't that it didn't offer a story, but
| that it didn't offer a sandbox mode, only a campaign mode...
| and that the campaign wasn't really a campaign.
| gloomyday wrote:
| Yes, there is a reason sandboxes are so popular among kids.
| jader201 wrote:
| Related:
|
| _RollerCoaster Tycoon was the last of its kind [video]_ (242
| points, 7 months ago)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42346463
| bpierre wrote:
| 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
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroProse#Brand_revival_(2018...
| YesBox wrote:
| There's also the city builder Metropolis 1998 [1]. Similar
| RollerCoaster Tycoon aesthetic
|
| [1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/2287430/Metropolis_1998/
|
| [2] (I'm the dev)
| Lammy wrote:
| > 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
|
| Notably one of the XBOX games that has never been backwards
| compatible lol
| 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
| dwroberts wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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...
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| Obligatory link to creator Chris Sawyer's page about RCT
| fountain's cellular automaton:
|
| https://www.chrissawyergames.com/feature4.htm
| Lammy wrote:
| I love the disclaimer on the RCT2 Screenshots page:
| https://www.chrissawyergames.com/feature5.htm
|
| > Click each thumbnail below to view the full 800x600
| screenshot image
|
| > (Warning: Each image is between 100KB and 250KB in size and
| may take a minute or two to download)
|
| Like when screenshot-heavy forum threads would have title
| suffixes like [56K NO!!]
| jvanderbot wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
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(page generated 2025-08-01 23:01 UTC)