RollerCoaster Tycoon (history and reception)

GameSpot's new-releases post of 22 March 1999 listed MicroProse and Hasbro Interactive's RollerCoaster Tycoon, developed by Chris Sawyer, as new on store shelves that Monday. IGN's review page gives 31 March 1999 instead, and Computer Games Magazine's interview of January 2000 says only that it was released in March. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/release-date

Neither GameSpot nor IGN names a region; both are US outlets. IGN's date sits in page furniture of a 2016 capture, not in the 1999 review text. No publisher press release with a ship date was found, so the conflict stays open.

Cited by: RollerCoaster Tycoon

Sawyer's own site says RollerCoaster Tycoon was released through Hasbro Interactive early in 1999, followed by two add-on packs, Added Attractions (Corkscrew Follies) in late 1999 and Loopy Landscapes in September 2000; an Xbox version published by Infogrames Interactive in 2003; and RollerCoaster Tycoon 2, published by Infogrames in October 2002. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/releases

"Added Attractions / Corkscrew Follies" is one pack under two titles; the page lists it once. The Xbox entry under Purchasing says that version includes both add-on packs.

Cited by: RollerCoaster Tycoon

Computer Games Magazine wrote in January 2000 that RollerCoaster Tycoon was created in a small village near Dunblane, Scotland, mainly by one person, Chris Sawyer. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/one-developer

The sentence is the magazine's introduction, not Sawyer's answer, so the claim is T1.

Cited by: RollerCoaster Tycoon

Sawyer has said RollerCoaster Tycoon began as a sequel to Transport Tycoon in 1996. He had rewritten the isometric world so that track could run on bridges over bridges, and while watching vehicles on those bridges he wondered what they would be like as roller coasters. He adapted the code he had written, had basic roller coasters running within a month or two, and abandoned the sequel. OpenRCT2's readme says the engine of RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 was based on Transport Tycoon. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/from-transport-tycoon-2

Code lineage: the sequel's code was Transport Tycoon's isometric engine, rewritten, so the edge to Transport Tycoon is formative. The readme's sentence follows one about RollerCoaster Tycoon 2, so "the engine" is the sequel's.

Cited by: RollerCoaster Tycoon

Sawyer told Arcade Attack that Bullfrog's Theme Park was a fun game but its roller coasters were "rubbish", which got him thinking, and that a book called "White Knuckle Ride", with photos of big roller coasters, made him think how fun it would be to build one in a Transport Tycoon-like isometric world. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/theme-park-and-coasters

Cited by: RollerCoaster Tycoon

Sawyer has said he bought himself out of the Transport Tycoon 2 contract and worked on "Project White Knuckle" full time, funding it himself and keeping it under wraps. The game kept the name White Knuckle through development, even after Hasbro Interactive became involved; when Hasbro bought MicroProse, the "Tycoon" connection made it RollerCoaster Tycoon. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/white-knuckle

Cited by: RollerCoaster Tycoon

Sawyer has said that people in the games industry told him a roller-coaster game would only ever be a niche game, and that the negative reactions gave him serious doubts during its two years of development. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/niche-warnings

Cited by: RollerCoaster Tycoon

Sawyer's site says RollerCoaster Tycoon is 99% x86 assembly, with some C to interface with Windows and DirectX, built with Microsoft Macro Assembler 6.11c, Visual C 5 and the DirectX 5 SDK. In a 2015 interview he said Transport Tycoon and RollerCoaster Tycoon on the PC were "entirely" programmed in x86 assembler code. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/assembly

The two figures differ; the FAQ's is the more exact and names what the C does.

Cited by: RollerCoaster Tycoon

Sawyer said assembly let him make the simulation more detailed: it needed so much processing that it had to be highly optimised, which he thought impossible in a high-level language. The cost is that assembly can't be recompiled for another platform. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/why-assembly

The question names both games, and Sawyer's answer speaks of "the game".

Cited by: RollerCoaster Tycoon

Asked why the game isn't difficult in the usual strategy-game sense, Sawyer said it should be "fun to play with rather than just fun to play against", and that a harder game might turn hours of park building into bankruptcy and the end of the game. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/fun-to-play-with

Cited by: RollerCoaster Tycoon

The 2001 mini manual opens with "A Word from John Wardley", a ride designer whose coasters include Nemesis and Oblivion at Alton Towers and Megafobia at Oakwood, with tips on designing a coaster as a journey that keeps its surprises to the end. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/wardley-foreword

Alan Dunkin's GameSpot review of 13 April 1999 scored it 8.6 out of 10. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/gamespot-score

{
 "review": "GameSpot",
 "of": 10,
 "score": 8.6
}

Cited by: RollerCoaster Tycoon

Dunkin described it as a combination of Disney's Coaster and Bullfrog's Theme Park, with Theme Park its only real competition. He faulted it for running at only two speeds, stop and go, and for its 21 scenarios, with no way to make more and no open-ended scenario. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/gamespot-verdict

Cited by: RollerCoaster Tycoon

Jason Bates's IGN review of 2 April 1999 scored it 8.5 out of 10. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/ign-score

{
 "review": "IGN",
 "of": 10,
 "score": 8.5
}

Cited by: RollerCoaster Tycoon

Bates wrote that it was a lot like Theme Park, "but so what? It's also a lot of fun", and that MicroProse had beaten Bullfrog's Theme Park 2 to the punch. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/ign-verdict

Cited by: RollerCoaster Tycoon

Jeff Green's review in Computer Gaming World (July 1999) called it "an utterly charming gem of a strategy game from MicroProse", a game in which you get to clean up vomit, and a change of pace for players tired of conquering galaxies and fighting wars. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/cgw-verdict

The review's columns interleave in the PDF's text layer, so each fragment is quoted as one column line holds it. The rating box's stars are a graphic not read here.

Cited by: RollerCoaster Tycoon

Eurogamer's review of 18 May 2000, by nach0king, scored it 8 out of 10. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/eurogamer-score

{
 "review": "Eurogamer",
 "of": 10,
 "score": 8
}

Eurogamer's reviewer called it extremely impressive, "great for strategy fans, SimCity lovers, and anyone hoping to produce the next Disneyland". rollercoaster-tycoon-history/eurogamer-verdict

Computer Games Strategy Plus's awards, posted on 6 March 2000, named it Strategy Game of the Year, with Heroes of Might and Magic III and Jagged Alliance 2 as finalists. The citation praised it for keeping the player on the fun parts, unlike Theme Park. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/cgs-strategy-award

Cited by: RollerCoaster Tycoon

Computer Games Magazine wrote in January 2000 that RollerCoaster Tycoon was the best-selling game of 1999 according to PC Data, with over 700,000 copies sold in the US. The magazine reasoned from that figure, as about 80% of the market, that it had likely sold more than a million in under a year. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/sales-1999

The "more than a million" is the magazine's inference from a US share of about 80%, not a PC Data figure. The magazine doesn't say which market the 80% is a share of.

Cited by: RollerCoaster Tycoon

Computer Gaming World reported in July 2002, announcing the sequel, that RollerCoaster Tycoon had sold 4 million copies. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/sales-2002

Cited by: RollerCoaster Tycoon

Sawyer recalled that sales started slow but steady and that it was a shock, a few months later, to learn the game was among the top-selling PC games of the year, with players from strategy fans to grandparents. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/sawyer-on-sales

Cited by: RollerCoaster Tycoon

Sawyer calls RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 his favorite, but thinks the original and its expansion packs may have been better games: the sequel's free-form play took away some of the challenge, and the original's scenarios were better. RollerCoaster Tycoon Classic, which recreates the sequel, brought back the original's scenario structure, for 95 scenarios in all. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/sequel-and-classic

Cited by: RollerCoaster Tycoon

Sawyer said the RollerCoaster Tycoon engine was then adapted for a new transport game, Chris Sawyer's Locomotion (2004), so the code went full circle from the abandoned Transport Tycoon 2. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/engine-to-locomotion

Cited by: RollerCoaster Tycoon

OpenRCT2 is an open-source re-implementation of RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 that needs the original game's files. Its readme says it adds improved guest and staff AI, and brings back mechanics of the first game that the sequel dropped, such as the in-game mountain tool and the "have fun" objective; with the first game's files it can play the original scenarios. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/openrct2

Cited by: RollerCoaster Tycoon

PC Gamer's Ellen McGrody likened Parkitect in 2018 to the early RollerCoaster Tycoon games, as isometric and management-focused, and wrote that it had grown from a recreation of the isometric rollercoaster sim into an evolution of it. Its developers, quoted there, speak of "older games" without naming one. rollercoaster-tycoon-history/parkitect

A press framing, not an influence edge; the developers don't name RollerCoaster Tycoon.

Cited by: RollerCoaster Tycoon