At one point, games which let you run a simulated theme park, zoo or city were ten a penny. Games like Zoo Tycoon, RollerCoaster Tycoon, Theme Park, Sim City flourished and often had multitudes of sequels and expansion packs. But nowadays, sadly, the genre seems to have died something of a spectacular death - which is a shame, because they were one of my favourite genres of games.
Yes, that is a dinosaur.
That's not to say I was phenomenally good at them, though - to be honest, I was rather terrible. I mostly played in the 'Sandbox' mode, with as much money as it would let me give myself, making a park/zoo to my own specifications and inevitably going bankrupt within six months, having blown all my money on a single rollercoaster that wasn't even half finished. I had big plans - too big for the amount of money I had.
Perhaps one of my favourites was RollerCoaster Tycoon 3. It let you colour in pretty much everything - my park 'Pink Land' was girlier than Disneyland on a Disney Princess reunion. Rollercoasters were shades of pink, purple and white, people walked around holding pink balloons and got mugged by an army of pink panda entertainers. You also got to put together your own track for each rollercoaster, adding in whatever twists, turns and loops you wanted (or could afford) and test it out - you could even send people on it without having finished the track, sending them flying everywhere when they inevitably flew off the end...
Taken shortly before they were flung halfway across the park because someone forgot to finish the rollercoaster off...
Seeing as Tycoon games and the like seem to be the exclusive property of the PC - and having an old, decrepit PC that grinds to a halt over running The Sims 3, I'd stopped playing games on it a long time ago, which unfortunately meant leaving these games behind. There's been a few console games that managed to tide me over - like the Xbox Live Arcade awesomeness that is Outpost Kaloki X, and ports of Zoo Tycoon and Theme Park on the DS - but there's never been a 'proper' version. Not till now, anyway.
You see, Atari have announced the 3DS is getting a version of RollerCoaster Tycoon - cunningly called RollerCoaster Tycoon 3D. Not much is known about it except it'll launch sometime next year and it's apparently been tailored exclusively for the 3DS - it sounds like it's an entirely new game, and not a port of one of the earlier games. What sounds most interesting about this is its special 'Coaster Story' mode, which sets you various challenges as you journey round the world trying to expand your rollercoaster empire, unlocking special themes, attractions and amenities as you progress. And in further good news for hopeless people like me, they've apparently compressed the "demanding management simulation" of the games into a manageable hand-held form in an aim to create "a challenging yet manageable take on the genre for players of all ages" - yay!
With the game launching next year, there's sure to be a whole load of information coming out of the woodwork in the coming months, so stay tuned. In the meantime, here's a trailer that doesn't actually tell you an awful lot about the game... It does have funky music though:
