This feature is almost a follow up to an essay I wrote a while ago called Funfair King. In it I discussed an idea I had for a strategy game where you're the owner of a funfair or carnival company. Well it turns out I wasn't the only one too have this idea, as recently I was in the Worthing branch of Game, where my girlfriend was looking for a Christmas present for her nephew and saw a game on the shelves called Carnival Tycoon.

As a game, I wouldn't say it's a serious contender to the Roller Coaster Tycoon series. It has quite a clumsy menu system, you have to call up, and go through the menu to place each individual bin or bench. This is very annoying if you're doing a food court and need to place multiple items.
The A.I. of the visitors is also a problem. I found myself having to place bins at the back of food shops because people were wandering off the main midway, even if there were no attractions in that area. These though don't present to major a problem, and are more annoyances than something that will have a major effect on the game play.

Perhaps what puts this behind Roller Coaster Tycoon the most is the lack of things to do. There are a limited number of rides and challenges available, meaning you will probably tire of the ride selection in a short period of time. Another problem, which hi-lights why when I thought of this idea I wanted a turn based strategy as opposed to a real time one is once you've designed and opened your funfair for the day there isn't that much to do other than order rides to be repaired, and correct any design mistakes you might have made. It's hard to tweak exhisisting attractions as well, as you get very little information about them. I couldn't even find out how much money an attraction was making, yet alone how people felt about the price, or why they where unhappy about an attraction.

To be fair though the game only cost me £10.00. For that price I still think it's quite an enjoyable game, if you have the patience to get the most out of it. I got a couple of afternoons enjoyment from it, which is everything I'd reasonably expect from a game that only cost me £10.00.

This wasn't my first experience of a theme park related computer game. My first experience, well technically it was themed around a circus was a game I played back on the 8-bit commodore 64. This brings back nostalgic memories of watching the loading screen of flashing coloured stripes (someone should make that in to a screensaver) and trying to get all the diamonds on Magic Land Dizzy. One other game some of you might remember was Fiendish Freddy's big top'o'fun. It was a collection of Minigames, linked by the theme of a circus. It played pretty well for a game of it's era, unfortunately the slow loading times of the cassette tape based storage of the C64 meant we couldn't really get the best out of this type of  game until Aquatic Games on the Amiga 500+ several years later.

The mention of the Amiga brings me to my next theme park related game, Theme Park Mystery. What do you mean you've never heard of it? I brought it under similar circumstances to which I brought Carnival Tycoon. Mainly it was theme park related, and going cheap, so impulse took over. The game was mostly a platformer, accompanied by a nice selection of minigames. The game had four levels, each being themed around a different world at a deadly theme park.

The Amiga was my first experience of a theme park game that had more to do with theme parks, other than just a theme, a game appropriately enough called Theme Park. It was the first ever theme park designing strategy game, which spawned a whole sub genre of games, starting with Hillsea Lido on the Amiga, a game I have fond memories of playing the demo of, continuing on to the Rollercoaster Tycoon and Thrillville  series.

At the time Theme Park, along with Lemmings 2 was one of my most played games. This was despite the fact it was pretty limited by today's standards. The theming was limited to a lake and a few trees, and the ability to customise rides was also limited. I do remember using a lots of money cheat to design a water ride that lasted about 10 minutes. The little people wouldn't complain about being stuck on it so long, but instead would come of with the happiness rating "as happy as can be."

Theme Park spawned several sequels, Theme Park World in 1999, and Theme Park Inc in 2001. Unfortunately for the makers of the Theme Park series 1999 was also the year of the first game that spawned the series most people consider superior, Roller Coaster Tycoon. Having played all three in the Theme Park series I'd say the main problem is they play more like a strategy game, where the theme of the game happens to be a theme park. You don't get the creative freedom like you do in the Roller Coaster Tycoon series, where it feels like you could be designing a real life park.

This brings me to the Roller Coaster Tycoon series itself. The first one was released in 1999, with two sequels released in 2002 and 2004. Plus each version of the game had 2 expansion packs released, making a grand total of 9 versions released from 1999 up to the last one in 2005. The third game was a big leap, as the graphics went from isometric 2D to full 3D. As well as improving graphically you could now ride your creations for the first time.

From a game play perspective I do prefer the first and second one to the third version. The third one I found that big thrill rides and pre designed coasters took a much bigger emphasis in park design, and there was less scope for being creative in a mission to design your own coaster, and when it came to theming your park.

The other game type that came out in this period was the Roller Coaster Designer, such as Ultimate Ride in 2001, and No Limits. In these you can design a  huge number of coasters. You could  even set the angle and banking for each piece of  track giving you the chance to design your own new ride elements and inversions if  you wished, you were no long constricted to the limits of the Roller Coaster Tycoon coaster designer. You can still get hold of Ultimate Ride on E-bay, and you can download No Limits as shareware from the official website. Be warned though that designing a coaster like this is more complex and takes more time and effort. If you don't want to make that kind of effort stick to Roller Coaster Tycoon.

Ultimate Ride and No Limits weren't the only Roller Coaster game released. There was one game released towards the end of the days of the Dreamcast called Coaster Works. It was a simplified version of the coaster designer genre, where you had to design a coaster to match a set of objectives over  six levels. It was easy to complete, but the fun was replaying levels to design new coasters. It was a very limited game in terms of what you could design, but was a lot more accessible than some of the more complex games.

This brings me on to the present day. It will be interesting to see where this sub genre of game goes from here. Certainly the recent release of Thrillville on the X-box show there's still life in these games yet.