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Rank the theme park simulation games you’ve played

Matt N

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Hi guys. As you probably all know by now, I love a good ranking topic, and it feels like ages since I’ve done one, so today, I decided to do a new ranking topic, and I decided to rank something different; how about ranking the theme park simulation games you’ve played? I know that a number of you are into theme park simulation games, and I’m guessing that most of you have encountered them at some point in your lives, so I thought this might be a fun, and slightly different ranking topic to do, and I’d be very interested to hear your opinions on some of the different theme park simulation games!

I’ll get the ball rolling with my personal ranking.

In terms of the more well-known, PC-based ones, I’ve only played Planet Coaster and RCT3, but I’ve also played some of the iOS theme park games as well, as well as a 3DS theme park game. My ranking of the ones I’ve done is as follows:
  1. Planet Coaster (Frontier, PC) - I’ve been playing Planet Coaster regularly since 2017, and it’s the easy winner for me. The game is so flexible, letting you do just about anything you want to do, the graphics are just blissful and the coaster builder, as well as the grid builder, is just brilliant! It also feels very relevant, with up-to-date ride types, which I like! Admittedly it isn't the easiest game to jump right into initially, but once you've gotten the gist of it, it's very simple to use and interact with, and you can build wonderfully realistic stuff within it once you've got the hang of the mechanics! Sure, there are things I’d change about it (I’d add certain ride types, and also add the ability for more complex elements like switch tracks, as well as different station designs and operational paradigms to allow for greater throughput on rides), but that’s just me picking at flaws; PlanCo is the perfect theme park simulator, in my opinion, and an easy steal for #1!
  2. RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 (Frontier, PC) - I do have a huge soft spot for RCT3, I’ll admit! It was the first proper PC theme park simulation game I ever played when I first started playing in 2014, and I had many a fun time playing this! Sure, it’s a little bit basic compared to Planet Coaster, and it was certainly showing its age somewhat by the time I stopped playing in 2017 (both in terms of graphics and in terms of ride types on offer), but it certainly gave me a lot of enjoyment, and given it came well before Planet Coaster, it offers a decent degree of flexibility and shares some of Planet Coaster’s great attributes! I do also like the ability to include zoo and waterpark elements (if you chose to purchase RCT3 Wild and RCT3 Soaked) within your parks, which PlanCo does lack, and it also has certain more retro and weird ride types that PlanCo lacks. Overall, RCT3 was a game I had great fun playing, and it was certainly a great introduction to the world of PC theme park simulators, in my opinion!
  3. Coaster Crazy (Frontier, iOS) - This is where my memory starts to get a little hazier, as I didn't spend quite as much time playing these and many were played a long time ago, and also where my rating drops quite markedly. That's nothing against the mobile and 3DS theme park games by any means, but I'm increasingly realising that I think the greater flexibility of the PC ones is more my style. In terms of this particular game; it was certainly quite kiddified in comparison to some of the others (although probably no more so than any of the other iOS and console ones; I'm mainly comparing to the PC ones here), but I remember it being pretty good fun, and it comes out on top because I remember the coaster builder actually being fairly decent on this one, if not necessarily mind-blowingly accurate in terms of physics! As well as that, it provided a feature to ride along on the coasters you built, which was cool! This was more of a coaster builder as opposed to a full theme park simulator, however, so it lacks that overall breadth and flexibility that the PC ones have.
  4. RollerCoaster Tycoon 3D (n-space, Nintendo 3DS) - Before RCT3, this was probably the theme park game I played most, and for the time, it was a fun one! It's slightly different to the others, as it's more story-based (you are a budding theme park developer being trained by a retired roller coaster engineer), but the same basic principles do ultimately apply. The coaster builder is somewhat basic (the most interesting elements you can do are banked turns, and you can only build wooden coasters), but does the job, and as a 10 year old playing it, I thought the feature where it took your "on-ride photo" (took a webcam photo of you and put you into the train) as you were riding was quite cool! However, the game did lack a bit of flexibility; I could only build about 3 rides before it came up with "Sorry kiddo; local zoning laws forbid you from building any more". Still, RCT3D was fun for what it was, and certainly one that 10/11-year-old me enjoyed playing!
  5. Theme Park (EA, iOS) (Note: I'm not referring to the more famous Bullfrog game here; this is the iOS app released by EA in the early 2010s) - Theme Park was quite a basic game in terms of mechanics, in hindsight, which is why it ranks lower, but I thoroughly enjoyed it when I used to play it on my iPad in my early days of theme park enthusiasm! In terms of how it worked; from memory, you were allocated a plot of land with a few set "ride plots" and "facility plots", and you could fill your park with a selection of rides and facilities from a selection of pre-built rides and facilities. To be honest, it wasn't so much a theme park simulator as it was "FarmVille: Theme Park Edition", wherein you build stuff on pre-set plots, but there's not much flexibility, customisation or ability to interact with the stuff you've built, and stuff takes real time to build (for instance, a coaster would take 24 hours to "build", which could be sped up if you forked out £5 or so), although Theme Park did not utilise Facebook integration like some of the games of this style did. Overall, Theme Park was a game that I in my early enthusiast days thoroughly enjoyed playing, although I'm unsure that the style of it would appeal to me as much now.
  6. RollerCoaster Tycoon 4 Mobile (Atari, iOS) - To be honest, this one is probably quite similar to Theme Park, perhaps more flexible as it did allow you to create coaster layouts, but it ranks last for me because I didn't play it for anywhere near as long as I played Theme Park due to its heavy reliance on Facebook integration inhibiting my enjoyment somewhat. The game interface was perfectly good and all, but I seem to remember quitting after building a coaster, and the game saying I needed 3 Facebook friends to give me tools to open it even once I'd waited 24 hours or whatever for it to be built. As I didn't have 3 Facebook friends playing the game, that stifled me somewhat unless I wanted to fork out actual money.
So, that's my ranking of all the theme park simulation games! To give you some idea, Planet Coaster and RCT3 are a fair cut above the others for me, and the freemium ones (Theme Park and RCT4Mobile) are a cut below. That's nothing against the freemium, mobile & console ones by any means, it's just simply because the freemium style doesn't offer the flexibility I personally look for in a theme park simulator; call me old-fashioned or boring or whatever, but controversially, I've grown to prefer a good old PC theme park simulator, with the greater flexibility they offer!

But how would you rank the theme park simulation games you've played?
 
Oooh interesting one @Matt N , for me it;s quite clear
1. Planet coaster - probably the best theme park sin ever made. It's never ran very well on any PC I've used and I still love it.
2. Roller coaster tycoon 2 - considering how old it is it's superb. Although basic it's great fun especially trying not to run out of money always a good challenge.
Roller Coaster tycoon 4 mobile - A bit of a strange game made really for more of a smaller audience. I did enjoy it for the short time I played it but I do remember there being lot's of adds. I didn't have the facebook integration issue @Matt N is talking about so maybe that was just you?
 
1. Planet Coaster. I've only just started to get the patience to really invest in the detail this game can offer, but the leaps and bounds made since RCT3 are incredible.

2. ORCT2. I say OpenRCT2, and not the traditional because the modified version takes the original concept and makes it something far better. Nostalgia mixed with modern functions and multiplayer capability.

3. Parkitect. Given the minuscule size and huge ambition of the passionate dev team, this is a great little game. I haven't played it for a while, but hopefully, I find the time to be able to do so again.

3. RCT3.

4. RCT2.

5. TPS. The concept of Theme Park Studio was great, they just never delivered the actual vision. Mothballed into an entirely different game now with TPS as just a plug-in. Not a fan of the developers and their somewhat warped views either.

5. Theme Park Inc. I was only very young when I last played this, but I seem to recall it being the first theme park game that gave you the ability to have POVs as well? I could be wrong. Nostalgia overload on this one.

6. Coaster Crazy - A boredom cruncher on the iPad. Nothing more, nothing less.

7. RCTW - What a complete catastrophe.
 
Roller Coaster tycoon 4 mobile - A bit of a strange game made really for more of a smaller audience. I did enjoy it for the short time I played it but I do remember there being lot's of adds. I didn't have the facebook integration issue @Matt N is talking about so maybe that was just you?
In fairness, it’s at least 5 years since I (briefly) tried it, so the game could well have changed a fair bit since then.
 
In fairness, it’s at least 5 years since I (briefly) tried it, so the game could well have changed a fair bit since then.
Its got to be about that for me as well. Maybe I just can't remember it happening.

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk
 
Its got to be about that for me as well. Maybe I just can't remember it happening.

Sent from my SM-G965F using Tapatalk
In fairness, I don’t have the greatest memory of RCTMobile in general (as I’ve alluded to, it was a brief encounter quite some time ago), so some details might not be exactly correct nowadays, but I distinctly remember something or other stalling me in that game and preventing me from opening my first coaster!
5. TPS. The concept of Theme Park Studio was great, they just never delivered the actual vision. Mothballed into an entirely different game now with TPS as just a plug-in. Not a fan of the developers and their somewhat warped views either.

7. RCTW - What a complete catastrophe.
If you don’t mind @Danny, I wanted to ask questions about these two.

I actually remember Theme Park Studio being announced and being quite intrigued by the concept, but I always thought it was more of an NL2-type thing than an actual theme park game. What game/tool did it eventually turn into, and if you’re comfortable saying on the forums, what do you have against the developers?

With regard to RollerCoaster Tycoon World; I’ve never played it and honestly don’t know much about it (most of what I’ve ever seen or heard about it is just people absolutely panning it), but I was under the impression that it was very similar to Planet Coaster, so what it is that it manages to get so wrong, in your view?
 
To explain RCTW
RCTW was commissioned by Atari to be released the day before Planet Coaster hoping to make a quick buck. Atari are a publisher not a developer so they got a series of small developers to try to make RCTW but these companies lacked the expertise of Frontier so the game became very buggy and the graphics are worse than RCT3 from 12 years prior. After RCTW, Atari has tried to milk the franchise with increasing terrible games like RCT Adventure and RCT Story. I think this video does a good job of explaining the history of the RCT franchise in detail:
 
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The original Bullfrog Theme Park was one of the things that got me into theme parks. I'm sure it'd seem very low tech if I played it now, but I liked the fact you were competing against other parks, rather than it just being scenario based. Of course the graphics were simple compared to modern games, and the ride development fairly basic. It was also a bit buggy. But you competed against other parks on a number of criteria, and could break records, e.g. for the longest go kart track etc. I'd like to see a modern version of Theme Park. Not that I play video games anymore.
 
If you don’t mind @Danny, I wanted to ask questions about these two.

I actually remember Theme Park Studio being announced and being quite intrigued by the concept, but I always thought it was more of an NL2-type thing than an actual theme park game. What game/tool did it eventually turn into, and if you’re comfortable saying on the forums, what do you have against the developers?

With regard to RollerCoaster Tycoon World; I’ve never played it and honestly don’t know much about it (most of what I’ve ever seen or heard about it is just people absolutely panning it), but I was under the impression that it was very similar to Planet Coaster, so what it is that it manages to get so wrong, in your view?

The game very much started as something quite like NL, but then it evolved into more of being able to design and manage parks in concepts and "promises" from the developers. It then ultimately became the foundations and went on to become a "plug-in" for a game designed by Panterra called Your World. There's no website, other than a Facebook page and "promises" the game is still in a constant testing phase. You appear to be able to control NPCs and walk around theme parks, and they've "promised" this can be done in a multiplayer aspect, alongside being able to build parks (and cities etc) with friends.

Whilst this concept sounds great, Panterra have been pretty poor at delivering to their promises previously. They failed to send out a lot of their Kickstarter merch and items to backers. They were meant to distribute copies of their original game, Hyper Rails, to backers whilst TPS was in development. They never did. There were t-shirts that they were going to ship to backers. They never did. They were going to send a hard disk copy to backers. They never did. I was outright refused a refund, but I really couldn't be arsed pursuing them further as I was going through my final year of uni and potentially serious health issues at the time. It was never a priority.

Furthermore, they had a community forum for feedback and communication with backers on their website. Great; a direct method to put across valid criticisms, feedback, and opinions. No. If you had a negative view or opinion, you'd be shot down. Heaven forbid you actually suggest implementing dark rides into the game; the developers cited being highly religious and against any form of dark concept for putting dark rides into the game for their consumers. They were the pinnacle of rude and just appear to be so amateurish.

RCTW isn't even in the same league as RCT3, never mind Planet Coaster. Whilst the coaster builder allows for you to build more flexible coasters now, a highly modded RCT3 with CFRS, CS, and CTRs, is still way more capable than RCTW. The whole game feels lazy, particularly the pathing tool. Not to mention the incredibly laughable development process where they cycled through developer after developer. It's a total insult to the legacy that came before it. Planet Coaster is the true RCT3 sequel, not this.
 
Would I be right in saying that PlanCo was made by the same development team as RCT3, or am I making that up?
 
RCT2 - The best ever, dread to think how many hours I've spent on this. And then again with the smartphone version RCT Classic which is identical.

Planet Coaster - Perfection tbf. I play it on the Xbox so I'm fairly limited in terms of building themeing. Have done 100% completion on challenge mode twice now and it's so much fun.

RCT3 - The buzz when this came out was off the charts. Once the novelty of riding your coasters had worn off it was a bit buggy and quite frustrating to play.

Also I think I may have dreamt this, but I'm certain there was something you could download in the mod 00's that allowed you to ride your RCT2 Coasters in a separate app?

@Matt N if you've not played RCT2, search for RCT Classic on your smartphone. Best £5.99 you'll ever spend.
 
Also I think I may have dreamt this, but I'm certain there was something you could download in the mod 00's that allowed you to ride your RCT2 Coasters in a separate app?
You can actually do that without installing mods, if you have RCT2 and 3 you can design and save your coasters in RCT2, open a park in RCT3 and there is a section in the add new rides menu that allows you to scan for RCT1 and 2 designs on your system, you can then place them and ride.
 
You can actually do that without installing mods, if you have RCT2 and 3 you can design and save your coasters in RCT2, open a park in RCT3 and there is a section in the add new rides menu that allows you to scan for RCT1 and 2 designs on your system, you can then place them and ride.
Interesting but not really needed now with Planet Coaster existing.

This was back in the day when such a thing was like witchcraft.
 
@Matt N if you've not played RCT2, search for RCT Classic on your smartphone. Best £5.99 you'll ever spend.
I’m not sure what I’d think to RCT2, to be honest. Unlike many of you, RCT3 was my first look into the RollerCoaster Tycoon franchise, and I’m kind of used to (and like) the 3D aspect, as well as the ability to ride your coasters. With the fact I’ve also solely been playing PlanCo for 4 years now, I feel like I’d find the RCT method quite basic now (not that that’s necessarily a bad thing; I just think I’d find it a lot harder to make creations that I’m proud of).

Out of interest, what is it about RCT3 that’s so inferior to the other 2 RollerCoaster Tycoon games (well, the original 2, anyway)? Surely the 3D aspect made it look more realistic to play, and the riding your coasters added an element? I also think it shares some of PlanCo’s positive attributes, and paved the way for PlanCo quite nicely; for instance, it had many very realistic and relevant ride types for the time, and it also added the ability to bring in your own music (something I myself have found pretty useful in both RCT3 and PlanCo).

Admittedly, the graphics don’t look too brilliant by 2021 standards, but I played for years and never found it particularly buggy myself. Also, surely the graphics are an improvement on RCT2 and RCT1 given the 3D and the earlier 2 games’ relative age? I’ve seen RCT1 and 2 shots, and I personally think that the graphic style of RCT3 is a big improvement, but each to their own, I guess!

I feel like I must be missing something with RCT2 given that most rate it so highly, even above Planet Coaster… could nostalgia possibly play a role, as I get the impression many grew up playing it? Or is/was the game genuinely far better than any modern theme park simulator?
 
Nostalgia definitely plays a part but I was probably the most excited bloke in Europe when RCT3 came out and it never grabbed me like RCT2. The beauty is in it's simplicity.

I've always preferred the challenges over Sandbox modes too and RCT2 was always the most challenging/rewarding. Even on the Android version I'd be 15 years into a 3 year scenario park.
 
Nostalgia definitely plays a part but I was probably the most excited bloke in Europe when RCT3 came out and it never grabbed me like RCT2. The beauty is in it's simplicity.

I've always preferred the challenges over Sandbox modes too and RCT2 was always the most challenging/rewarding. Even on the Android version I'd be 15 years into a 3 year scenario park.
Ah, fair enough!

I’ve always been more of a sandbox person myself; I have played a little bit with the career/scenario/challenge modes, but I’ve never really gotten into them, and I’ve always much preferred the sandbox mode.

I just love how you can create stuff to your heart’s content with no limitations in sandbox mode!
 
As someone who cumulatively lost days, weeks, maybe months to RCT & RCT2, I was excited for RCT3, but when it landed it felt like a massive departure from the first two games whereas the sequel just made the original better. The 3D aspect was probably inevitable for the generation that it was being released for, but the abandonment of the original rule engine seemed crazy.

From a realism perspective, there's nothing better than No Limits 2, surely.
 
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