Thanks for the trip down Memory Lane, Wagi. (I remember the first time someone called you that; musta been on the old Atari site. You replied with something like: "Sure, you can call me that." I guess it sorta stuck.
)
Quote: "What was the first experience you had with the RCT games or similar and when? How many of the different games have you enjoyed?"
Okay, this is gonna be a long one. (I'll wait here while you make a trip to the bathroom:
)
Now then: Back in the mid 1990s, I was playing the original Sim City on my MacII when the idea struck me how cool it would be to play a Sim City-type game where you build theme parks instead of cities. I decided to try and write/program a theme park building game (just for my own enjoyment) on my Atari 130XE (8 bit) computer, using BasicXE- a souped-up version of Atari Basic.
When I was about halfway through the programming, I read about a game called RollerCoaster Tycoon (or something like that
). And I remember thinking "Why am I bothering to program this piece-o-crap game", which I probably would never finish anyway. RCT was made for Windows and I didn't get my first Windows PC until 2004. So I shelved my game (which I called SimPark), thinking that I would just wait to play RCT when I finally got a Windows PC.
Well, by that time (2004), RCT3 had already been released for a couple of months. So I skipped RCT and RCT2 and bought RCT3 instead. And I liked it!
A lot! Shortly after I bought RCT3, the Soaked expansion came out. I remember standing in the computer games aisle, reading the blurb on the Soaked box: "Design, build, and operate the ultimate summertime fun park with water rides...". Well, I wasn't much into water parks so I put the box back on the store shelf.
A couple of months later I decided to read the game box again (I could feel it gnawing at me every time I saw it in the games aisle). That's when I discovered that, with Soaked, you could now tunnel into the terrain; which I really, really wanted to do. Plus, Soaked came with new themes, coaster types, etc. I snatched it up right away. And while I'm still not real big on water parks, I do enjoy building them. And the Soaked expansion is probably the best thing that happened to the RCT franchise.
A month after I finally bought Soaked, the Wild expansion came out. I knew right away, even without reading the box, that I would buy it. I'm not that much into building zoos either, but they had me at "prehistoric".
It was also about this time that I saw the original RCT and RCT2, plus all their expansions, in the bargain bin at Office Max. So I got those as well, and played through all the scenarios. I like playing those earlier iterations of the game (I still play them every few years), but man, they have a few major annoyances:
1) You can't zoom in close enough to really see any detail.
2) The camera is constricted to the four compass points. Many times I tried to nudge the camera to the left or right to get a better view of something, only to remember that you can't do that in these games.
3) You can't ride the rides.
4) No shadows. That, plus the isometric view where everything is the same size, whether its closest to you or farthest away, makes it hard to tell if you've placed a stall, etc. properly. I remember several times when I would plop down say, a restroom. And then, many (real-time) hours later I would get a message that the guests can't reach the entrance to the restroom. Turns out I accidently placed it about 30 ft. in the air! But I couldn't tell, for the reasons listed above, and because something was blocking the view from the other three camera angles.
All in all, there just isn't much of an immersive feel to RCT(1&2). I'm sure that if I had bought and played those two games before RCT3 that I would have a much different take on their shortcomings.
And then RCT3 Platinum came out and I got that as well, because it was already patched (I hated messing with those patches) and everything was all on 1 disk. Easy-peasy. A few years ago I bought a second copy of Platinum just in case something happened to the one I already had. So yeah. I have: RCT3 vanilla, Soaked, Wild, and 2 copies of Platinum. Atari has a lot of my money.
I don't have Planet Coaster yet. I'm waiting for the kinks to be worked out. Plus a few more features that are currently not available. I realize that those features will probably never come to pass, unless another Jonwil, Belgabor, or Marcus Lomberg comes along and partially cracks the game like they did with RCT3. I'm sure I'll get the game eventually; the graphics are fantastic.
I don't have Theme Park Studio either. I contributed to their Kickstarter program many (many) years ago... I'm still waiting for my boxed version of the game to arrive in the mail.
Parkitect looks like fun, in a retro RCT2 sort of way. I'll probably get that game as well, mainly for the park management aspects and to play the scenarios.
I also have a few of the older games like Ultimate Ride and Sim Theme Park. But I've only played them for a few hours (back in the day) and lost interest in them.
Whew! Now, if you'll excuse me; I have to use the restroom.