The Games That Made Me: Roller Coaster Tycoon
“BiCE 1 has no path leading from it’s entrance”
Welcome to a new series i’m calling “The Games That Made Me”. Highlighting several titles over the years since first booting up my SNES and PC when I was a lad.
I had some ideas swirling on what I could do with my poor, neglected, “Games” tab. And I figured since current gaming, while great, is exhausting to talk about. Why not go back and take a look at foundational titles that molded me into not only the #GAMER I am today, but in some cases, the person I am today.
And what better way to start than to look at the masochistic capitalist greed simulator that is,
Roller Coaster Tycoon.
Little did i know as a child that this game would still be with me years later.
“BiCE 1 Has Broken Down”
RCT is, simply put, the greatest management sim ever. Period. Nothing has aged so timelessly as RCT for me. The hours put in are incalculable at this point, hell just this last month or so as of writing, 70 hours. So there’s no telling how much time has been spent constructing the same Boomerang and Montezooma’s Revenge clones over the last 25 years. While it’s later iterations have mired any hopes of a true sequel, it’s the first and second installment as well as the “Classic” re-release that we’re talking about here. Don’t get me wrong, I do love 3, but that ain’t Chris Sawyer’s game.
So, what about it is special?
Simply put, it’s some of the earliest memories of gaming I have left. I still think about the times as a lad booting this up on my first Windows 98 PC at my Grandpa’s house, faffing about, placing nonsensical paths and ride track pieces not knowing a damn thing about how to actually construct a functional theme park. It wasn’t until I got a home PC and my mom played around with it, that I started to slowly understand what to do. How to actually construct a working ride, place down stalls for basic needs, a mechanic or two to make sure rides don’t kill anybody, a handyman or 40 to keep the park nice and tidy. But even still, it wasn’t until I was well in my 20’s that i could pore through the fine details. Becoming one with capitalism. Yes, let’s in fact charge for bathrooms, find the threshold in which guests will pay for a 3 second ride, charge 20 dollars more for an umbrella when it rains, extract every last cent outta these peeps, we’ve got a goal to hit. I’m no Marcel Vos or the many fine folks who play this for a living. But let me tell you, I could turn any park, big or small, into as profitable as Disneyland.
“Guests are complaining about the disgusting state of paths in your park”
Really, the fascination I had with the game is in the title: Roller Coaster. When I was a kid, I was a lil ‘fraidy cat and wouldn’t ride any Roller Coasters, despite playing with them on my computer. Hell, not even the indoor coaster, Space Mountain. But just looking at them was cool. The towering mammoths of steel and wood, roaring as the trains sped by (especially Superman(RIP), that shit was LOUD), always fascinated, but scared the bejeezus out of me. Of course I later overcame that, funnily enough with no fanfare, just “yeah sure” as i was asked if I wanted to ride FKA California Screamin’ in California Adventure as a middle school kid. Funny how such huge fears that seemingly manifest into something unfathomably unbeatable, can sometimes just pass like a wet fart as you get older.
Nowadays, I can ride anything, well so much as my semi-recently acquired motion sickness can handle(thanks dramamine).
Some all time favorite rides include:
Space Mountain - Disneyland
Xcelerator - Knotts Berry Farm
Full Throttle - Six Flags Magic Mountain
I need to ride more coasters outside of Cali.
“Guests can’t find the exit”
Well here we are, putting up the finishing touches and the last bit of scenery to really tie everything together. Charging 20 cents extra for that stupid Log Flume everyone seems to like. Dropping yet another Handyman to cleanup puke outside of “Death Coaster #9”. Spending thousands on advertising to push past the goal on October, Year 3. Now, with the Merry Go Round organ tune blaring for the 10th hour in a row, we have arrived at the conclusion of our scenario. Thank you for reading.
Now onto the next park.
Gentle Glen, tough scenario to fill in such a small space.