E3 2002: Roller Coaster Tycoon II

[gekko]

http://pc.ign.com/articles/360/360630p1.html

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.

This game looks hella sweet! Anyone got the original? I loved that game! Have you ever made the coaster that goes up, and straight back down? I always adjust my speed so my customers fly right off the track Damn I'm good.