You know those games that you love to play but you are, objectively speaking, quite bad at? For me the prime example is always RollerCoaster Tycoon. I’ve sunk so many hours into the original and its legendary sequel over the years. But to be honest, I’ve never felt quite adapt at building my own coasters, managing the park and instead just loved watching these miniature people running around my elaborate and slowly turning into unorganized creations. The original games are sacred to many players, and the often belittled sequels never managed to capture the vibe and feel of what made RCT so special. So the surprise announcement and sudden release of Rollercoaster Tycoon Classic, a dedicated port of the excellent mobile version, was a welcome one. While it certainly takes a bit of getting used to, this is a fantastic way to take that chainlift up to the peak of park management sims once again.
RCT is a traditional management sim. You are a godlike park director and the overall goal is to complete a set challenge within a time limit while constructing your parks in a wide variety of locations. Goals can be as simple as getting a set number of guests in your park with a positive rating before a specific end date, or you may have to reach a certain level of profitability. How you go about this is completely up to you and your own creativity. There’s a large selection of maps to choose from, each with their own challenge. From a desert with a single expensive and elaborate ride, to a lake where you will probably have to build most of your rides on top of the water. To running existing parks, such as Six Flags, or those themed after unique challenges. The rides are plentiful and most of them allow for your own custom build design, meaning you decide where to place the tracks and how to dress them up appropriately. All the while, making sure you do not run out of budget, keep your pathways clean and your guests safe.
The core gameplay loop for RCT is just so incredibly satisfying. I love constructing and re-constructing, my admittedly terrible, rollercoasters and rides. Seeing how guests respond to them and then improving them over time or adjusting entire segments of my park. I do think that while there are a number of tutorials, I am uncertain that for newcomers the game teaches enough of its in-depth mechanics. A lot of information can be learned from testing your rides, reading the thoughts of your guests and playing around with all the menus. The amount of customization is staggering, especially if you start to learn about land construction, underground pathways and scenery design. No two parks will ever be the same and your growth of understanding the mechanics is often reflected in the way in which you gain income and attract more and more guests. For those looking to experiment in all freedom, there is a designer mode, where you can build full rides with scenery and save them for future use. Though, the ‘scenario editor’ where you are able to play in a sandbox-like environment is absent from this version. A big miss in my opinion, as this made it a lot of fun to let your full creativity loose in your own scenario with limitless money and being able to ignore your park’s rating.
The visuals are translated near perfectly from the original PC release. There is a timeless charm to the sound-effects, music and the way in which the guests spread out like colonies of ants across the map. It’s one of those games that looks both gorgeous in motion as well as in stills. Which is good, as you’ll be looking at these worlds for possibly hours on end. I was kind of surprised to notice a stuttering performance when zooming out on the map. The Switch seems to have a hard time keeping up with this particular zoomed out view. It’s especially noticeable as RCT Classic is originally designed as a game for smart devices. That also leads into my gripes about the controls.
As RCT was originally designed for mouse and keyboard, translating its control scheme to a controller must’ve been a difficult task. I think that the controls work out fine most of the time. Whenever you’re directly building rides or laying down paths, you can confirm building new segments with the A-button and change direction with the directional buttons. Moving the camera around the park is mapped to the right stick, which can be combined with ZL and ZR for zooming and rotating. It takes a bit of practice, but this is also fine. I think mostly that the game struggles with its cursor movements. For one, its speed cannot be adjusted, meaning it can take a while to go from the park management features on the top of the screen, to the construction options at the bottom. While there are shortcuts mapped to the X and Y buttons, these make the cursor immediately snap to these menus, but do not open them. It would’ve been great if the controls were fully customizable with specific shortcuts. In particular with regards to viewing certain layers of the world and a quick or radial menu for specific tasks. Everything just takes a bit too long, especially when laying down pathways for example. The bridges menu is essential for creating queues that can cross over other pathways, but laying them down in separate locations means closing the path construction menu and then reopening it, going to the bridges tab and then selecting where to start building. So, as someone who mostly plays his Switch in handheld mode, imagine my disappointment when I found out that the game does not support touch input. This is really disappointing, as this game is based on the mobile version of RCT Classic which is completely designed for touch controls.
Rollercoaster Tycoon Classic is as faithful of a translation of the original management classic as you can possibly get. While it stumbles a bit when it comes to its controls and certain performance issues it is one of the most extensive and elaborate versions of RCT you can find. I know the die-hard RCT-fans will probably stick with Open RCT2 on PC. But for the more casual player that is looking for a thrilling dose of nostalgia this version on Switch is a great way to re-experience the game. For the true newcomers, it could be a bit of a bumpy ride, but the design choices, enormous amount of challenges and freedom and creativity available in this package makes the admission ticket worth it. Who knows, perhaps this time I’ll finally get good at designing my coasters and build one of those dream parks that the title screen always made me fantasize about.
