May
23, 2002 - I mentioned addiction yesterday when I
wrote about EverQuest 2. Some call that video
game crack, but for my money, I'd much rather take a hit
off of some roller coaster loving. When Microprose
brought Roller Coaster Tycoon out to stores, my
productivity went to poop. Trying to find a job was hard
enough. But managing several theme parks really took up
most of my time. It's hard work keeping all of those
people happy you know? They want bathrooms. They want
food. They want drinks. They want benches to rest on...
it's a never-ending struggle to keep a fickle crowd
happy. I was more than happy to take the responsibility
on my shoulders. And I kept it on my shoulders until
Egypt suddenly needed my help to run their
economy and defend their cities. But now after
jumping into various shoes, defending castles, waging
wars, running factories, and all of that, I'm glad to
hear that I'm being called upon once again to take up my
most favorite mantle of Roller Coaster Tycoon. Well,
technically Roller Coaster Tycoon II: Six Flags
Edition, but who wants to be technical?
I've been expecting and waiting for this one for a while
now considering it was basically a foregone conclusion
that a sequel would be released. After selling over six
million copies world wide, it was just a matter of time.
And I got my first look today at what will undoubtedly
cause more wasted man-hours. This is especially possible
given the ability of many computers to run all of the
programs you need at work and Roller Coaster
Tycoon II in the background.
Chris Sawyer and the dev crew just decided that they
wanted to keep the game as familiar to the original as
they could so the fans that have gained all of their
park building skills wouldn't feel alienated by new
design tools and a whole new learning curve.
So you'll immediately be familiar with the game, as I
was, because it uses the same engine as the first game,
just modified for certain new additions like lots of
animated extra pieces and much better animations on
rides. The patrons have the same basic needs and wants
and it uses the same basic interface including the same
way to build roller coasters except for one nifty
feature. You can now bring the coasters you've been
working on in your parks and work on them in a roller
coaster constructor screen. This way you can perfect the
ride to the nines, and then import it back into the
scenario without having to worry about barf in the
sidewalk or vandals breaking your benches, or people
getting hungry, or hungry vandals barfing on your
benches. It's a relaxing forum to really get creative
without freaking out about the infrastructure of your
park.
If you've been working on a ride within a scenario and
you've thrown some theming in there to make the ride
more exciting and interesting, that theming should be
transported to the ride as well so you can make sure
that you don't build on top or through any of that
stuff.
Building some of the park's theming will be much easier
as well. Objects in the game can now be stacked. Take
columns for instance. You can now have them stack one on
top of each other. Just hold down the shift key when
placing items and then move the mouse up, more of the
same items will appear stacked up. You can create some
really interesting and customized building structures
than you used to be able to.
You will also be able to lift objects up off of the
ground onto metal stilts as well using pretty much the
same technique. Only instead of having several of the
same objects stacked on one another, support structures
will boost up your buildings or items. You can go the
other direction as well sinking items and buildings
underground. If you ever played Roller Coaster Tycoon,
you'll be happy that you can finally build weird areas
wholly underground complete with bathrooms, food, and
whatever theming your heart desires.
You also have the ability to color more of your pieces
of theme pieces. An example was shown where lime green
castle walls were thrown together next to a nice lime
green radioactive looking lake. I never said it was a
pretty example... But that should add a whole lot of
variety to your game and make some of your areas into
some really cool looking places.
The other really big addition that fans have been
hollering for since the original was released was a
scenario editor. Well you hollerers, you get what you
hollered for. There's a complete editor in the game so
you can challenge your friends to complete some
challenging new games. Everything is here for you to set
up your park. This includes everything from how much of
a loan you can take out along with the interest rate,
how guests are feeling in the park (whether they're
hungry or bored or sick), beginning rides and shops, and
terrain. Everything you could want. And then you can set
victory conditions for the challenge.
So while they won't be putting a sandbox mode into the
game themselves, you'll be able to create one very
easily by creating an unlimited time, unlimited money,
flat terrain scenario with impossible to reach goals.
All you'll have to do is tune your park and try to reach
your own goals without the constraints of a regular
scenario.
While the basic engine is still the same from the first
game, it has been modified. Resolution has been
upped to a maximum of 1024x768 where the old game was
stuck in 640x480, so you'll notice a big difference in
terms of details. To go along with that in a weird sort
of way, the maps in the game have also been upped in
maximum size giving you much more room to expand into a
super duper mega park. The largest maps in the original
were 128x128. They now come in 256x256.
Along with all of that o0ther stuff, you can expect a
whole ton of new content in to go along with the stuff
that you've seen in the previous title and its
expansions. This includes 6 new themes, new mascots to
go along with them, new shops, new mini-rides, and 25
new coaster types. These coaster types include 9
completely new coaster types, some types that are
combined together out of features found in other
coasters, and some existing coaster types that have been
tweaked with new features added to them.
On top of all of that, as you may have noticed, Six
Flags themeparks has jumped into the fray. One of the
parks we saw complete with all of the accruements was
L.A.'s own Magic Mountain, which I consider to be one of
the best coaster parks in the world. They've got some
nasty stomach churning rides there that will blow your
mind. But it was shown in all of its glory and it was
perfect. The rides were totally recognizable. You'll
also get four other Six Flags parks aside from Magic
Mountain to mess around with.
So while I was a little surprised to see that they
didn't change the engine and the way coaster building
interface a little bit, I can't say that I'm totally sad
about what they've done here. There's a hell of a lot of
new things to play with and with the retooling of their
webpage to make it easier for users to trade coasters
and now scenarios, fans of the series have a lot to look
forward to from Roller Coaster Tycoon II.
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