There does come a point where there isn't much else to do with the game once you get good enough at it, so I started having fun doing "experiments". One of the things I did in RCT was build "prisons" where I leveraged things like the carousel to work as a one-way door into the park to allow guests to come in but prevent them from leaving; it lead to a barren cement building with a turbo drop coaster designed to be intentionally dangerous so I could "execute" prisoners. There was puke everywhere after a while. What a disturbing mind I had.
I think you were not the only one exploring those sides of those sort of games! I don't remember if it was SimCity 2000 or 3000 that I played the most, but I remember some of these tycoon/management/simulation games let our destructive sides really come out by letting us unleash volcanoes, tornadoes, earthquakes and similar, all at the same time :)
I never could complete a mission of F-117A Steal Fighter on Mac System 9.
However, RCT was a “Minecraft” of its day without the support of the community. It was huge. Everyone was playing it. I wish modding was a thing back then. We would have gone crazy but then when you read how RCT was made - glad we didn’t have to do it.
Ghost Recon (2001) runs perfectly through proton on my linux desktop. I still fire it up from time to time.
Also makes me think of the countless hours of fun Westwood Studios provided me with in my youth, real shame they didn't get to survive longer :/
I think there's a serious argument somewhere in there that perfection of a game is much easier in the "2D" realm and even now we've not really gotten close in 3D space - as proof I'd offer Factorio.
Because of this, heavy heavy code reuse is common and likely the folks who wrote it are gone, leaving only behind an ABI and a doc. This is why so many games have very similar design components to them. It worked for the business before (or a similar one), someone said sales go up, they pull in the ABI, now everything’s an open world, scavenger, PVP, base building, inventory management, shooter, looter, micro transaction scooter, rpg (with aimbot if you use a controller)
To me, some gameplay was lost going from 2D to 3D, and there's a huge opportunity for some game makers to make something beautifully cartoonish pixel perfect 3D / 2.5D with the perfect gameplay of 2D
But it made me think of how Minecraft has almost no story (well, something was added later but it’s optional to follow it) and perhaps that contributed to its major success.
Decent sandbox games don’t need stories if the mechanics are satisfying enough and games like Sawyer’s Tycoons and Minecraft are evidence of that.
Sometimes it’s nice to just unwind by playing a game with little to no pressure. You pick it up and drop it at your leisure. The only downside is they can turn into huge time sinks as they don’t have a clear “The End” to them.
Also a very long time ago I played it, but I seem to remember that you could continue any scenario for as long time as you wanted after completing it, you didn't need to exit the scenario once completed. Maybe I misremember? If not, that'd basically mean every scenario is also a sandbox once the goals were completed.
(wonder how many people, especially engineers share this, uh storyline... Just get up, build things)
RRT2 has it scenarios like Hell or High Water where you have fill in a giant crater with cement by orchestrating trains before ocean levels rise or just sandbox play building railways buying up business and watching connected cities boom. Always loved using cheats to make all competitors trains break down then take over their bankrupt company.
SimCopter and Streets of Sim City had missions/scenarios. Or you could just go fly/drive around any SimCity2000 map.
Remember a SimCopter cheat would essentially nuke the city and set everything in fire.
And Street let you blow up buildings by adding weapons to your car.
That's not to say story is bad but you can have quite good games without it, and any "long lasting/replayable" game has to have gameplay that stands alone.
People will put up with crappy gameplay for an amazing story, but they're not going to replay it much.
RollerCoaster Tycoon was the last of its kind [video] (242 points, 7 months ago)
[1] https://x.com/hilkojj/status/1950872926385037339
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroProse#Brand_revival_(2018...
[1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/2287430/Metropolis_1998/
[2] (I'm the dev)
Not mentioned in the article, but this did allow for a port of the game to the OG XBOX (733 MHz PentiumⅢ box) way back in 2003, long before the game's eventual remake as RCT Classic for ARM etc in 2017.
Interesting that the XBOX port is RCT1+expansions even though it came out after RCT2 did on PC, maybe due to lesser requirements or probably just to avoid cannibalizing RCT2 PC sales and to double-dip people who had already paid for RCT1 PC: https://youtu.be/Vtincfkl8KY?t=75
Notably one of the XBOX games that has never been backwards compatible lol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Xbox_games_compatible_...
RCT1 was one of those games that I spent entire summers playing as a kid (see also: SimCity 3000), entirely offline because tying up the house's single phone line with the modem wasn't allowed during the day. Even though RCT2 was objectively the better game it felt like an aesthetic downgrade, and I actively hated RCT3 and still do. RCT1's vibes are immaculate: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BitorD-HVuQ
Not sure if the clock speed is just for reference or emphasis re: efficiency, but RCT1 will in fact happily run on a Pentium 90 (which is still mind blowing to me given the scope of the game)
By the P2 era (97-98), especially as consoles show up, assembly's not desirable at all.
Pmode/w was released in 97 which speaks to the demand for a Watcom C/C++ protected mode extender at the time...
> Click each thumbnail below to view the full 800x600 screenshot image
> (Warning: Each image is between 100KB and 250KB in size and may take a minute or two to download)
Like when screenshot-heavy forum threads would have title suffixes like [56K NO!!]
Highfleet really is a great game though.
NegativeLatency•6mo ago
antithesizer•6mo ago