Firstly, thanks for those who read my last post. I’ve adjusted the title since.

For the new readers, this list is a bit unusual. I have ranked these games based on the number of hours played and not necessarily critical appeal or personal favoritism. It’s made for a very interesting list than just saying that RCT1 is the best because it is a masterpiece.

There’s a difference between a masterpiece game and the game you actually play the most, and that’s what this is about. Who would have thought that Legoland would have beaten Planet Coaster, RCT, and Parkitect in part one? Yeah, I could have made a very obvious list, but that’s obviously obvious.

I split this in two parts, because I wanted feedback halfway through, and because it’s quite long. Probably too long for one post. I make no money from advertising.

Let’s get on with the last five.

5. Theme Park World (50 hours)

This game has aged. Coming out in 1999, it was for its time revolutionary for bringing theme park games in 3D! Well, except the dodgy 3D walk around mode in the 1995 PS1 version of Theme Park, but that’s a bit different.

There are things this game does that were not in the Rollercoaster Tycoon series, including: restaurants, security cameras, guests that commit crimes, outer park transportation, tour rides, staff rooms, hiring researchers, and staff strikes.

These features made the management part of the game more interesting. Whilst I don’t appreciate it as much now, as a child, I actually enjoyed the idea of completing challenges for golden keys and tickets, and using those currencies to unlock special rides or new parks.

There’s something positive to be said about design a tycoon/simulation game like a traditional game, and not leaving too much to the player. It adds a sense of satisfaction when the levels or objectives are completed.

Most of my hours come from the PS2 version, which I really enjoyed! It was one of the first games I ever played, and the user interface is actually quite nice for a controller. This is one of the best ports of a construction game I have ever seen on console. The user interface loads instantly, everything is easily accessible, and the graphics were much updated from the PC version.

Plus, in the UK version the scottish advisor isn’t anywhere near as annoying as the USA one.

4. Theme Park (60 hours)

This is a game where I can switch on my brain, and focus. See, if I have my brain switched on in a game about scenery, I over think things and panic. But in Theme Park, where there’s barely any scenery, there are instead real things to panic about! There’s no worry of my pointlessly panicking about scenery with a switched on brain.

Most of the hours come from the DS version, which hasn’t aged greatly (annoying staff and guest pathfinding issues), but, as a child I loved this game.

The game has a sense of progression in the way you sell parks and restart. There’s no need for a campaign, or restrictive scenarios, because you create them yourself by starting fresh and keeping your income. It would have been great if there were much more items to unlock through building multiple parks, but no game is perfect.

I like the way you can set up the success or fail rate of sideshows. There’s a clear distinction between rides that are fun and rides that are boring but cheaper and more reliable. Each ride choice feels like a strategic decision. There’s also humour crammed into most parts of the game!

You get to manage the inventory of the shops! (Does no one else like that? No?) Staff can go on strikes, and you need to perform negotiations (I wish this could be replaced with FTL style event boxes with random chance choices).

There’s a sense of progression, and satisfaction, for working your way through the world map’s locations, and if you could keep special rides or shops from each location and take them to other parks, it would have made exploring the whole map much more rewarding.

Overall, it is an in-depth management game (maybe a little too far with the stock market), and perhaps needs to be revisited. Most theme park games since copy the RCT model, but there is more than one way to make the theme park simulation game!

3. Hmmm…

Since writing part one, I’m not sure if I want to include this or not. I was going to talk about Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis, at about 70-100 hours play. But, with there being four (yes, FOUR) dinosaur-based theme park games announced in the last year, it’s become it’s own separate genre. It’s like saying that Zoo Tycoon is a theme park building game when it isn’t.

When playing that game, as much as I loved it, I did feel like it needed more non-dinosaur related attractions like rides, shops, and more facilities to add extra variety to the park. Had it of had those things, it definitely would have been on the list as a theme park builder!

Nonetheless, a great game, which actually made research and fossil finding quite fun to do. The management was simple, yes, but the dinosaurs were what made it fun. Unlocking new dinosaurs, new buildings, and trying to attract new guests was entertaining, and didn’t feel tedious. Wish I could tell you why, although it’s probably because of the simplicity again.

2. Theme Park Inc (100-200 Hours)

Now this is a game that definitely has not aged well. Ugly graphics, an overly complex user interface, an annoying advisor, limited scenery and building options, rubbish physics for the roller coasters, and some tedious challenges towards the end.

But I played this for ages!

I keep coming back to these words: progression and satisfaction. Increasing your shares by completing objectives and challenges, unlocking new parks and switching between them (able to run three at once!), the personalisation of each challenge based on each of the advisors departments and personalities, the extra management features like research labs and training rooms, the (probably over complicated) way you had to unlock new sections of the park by completing a large research project and training lots of staff up.

All of those things above made the game addictive for me. If I replayed it today, I may find it tedious or too constricting. But as a child, I soaked up the business world. I sold 40 hot dogs in 30 days, I stopped litter and vomit being in the top three most frequent thoughts for 60 days, and I did many other very difficult tasks for me as a child.

A more challenging version of this for older audiences, with more freedom and scenery options, but still focusing on pleasing board members and having a set of levels and story to follow, would make for a great remake.

The theme park building itself isn’t great. It’s a business sim with rides in it. But no other theme park game has come close to this (quite constrictive) level of management and business simulation. It has the ideas there, even if the execution wasn’t great. Luckily, as a child I was too dumb to realise this.

1. Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 (1000+ Hours)

So, forget everything I just said about management and business simulation, because now it’s time for the complete opposite of that!

This was a huge part of my childhood and teenage years. I would play SimCity 3000 and SimCity 4 for the challenge and depth, then jump into this for the relaxing, and creative, sandbox gameplay.

I always tried to build BorregoWorld as this huge place, with each theme getting it’s own large area, connected by a large monorail or train system. Sometimes, I’d add a large lake with a path around it so people could walk to each zone, but I was fascinated mostly by trying to transport people around a huge park as effectively as possible.

The game doesn’t have the same scenery placing tools as Planet Coaster, with it’s freeform paths and lack of grid. Parkitect even beats this, with the addition of being able to stack objects or have them float, and have many more sub-grid objects.

But, the last two games customization tools are only necessary if you need to make new scenery. RCT3 has a huge amount of scenery, rides, buildings, terrain textures, paths, fireworks, pools, slides, animal enclosures, rollercoaster types, water rides, and curved terrain!

You can’t make your own scenery without modding, true, as in Planet Coaster you can draw your own shapes with the voxel terrain tool or stick blocks together. But, there’s so much available that I never needed to. I never had the patience to create my own scenery, and having such a large number of easy to place objects on an easy to place grid made it very easy for me to build large, sprawling parks.

It also felt more creative trying to use what was there to create new themes. For example, a weird combination of tribal, western, aquatic, and generic themes with the snow texture would make for a nice arctic park.

Despite complaints I’ve heard, I think the user interface is very well designed. The graphics have aged recently, but up until around 2013 when SimCity came out, I thought it looked amazing!

This has probably been a weird list, because I talk so much about management on my blogs and in this list, and yet RCT3 ended up being by far my most played theme park game.

There’s so much content in that game, so many ways to express yourself without having to download mods or consume too much time in scenery. I’m creative but lazy at the same time, and for those lazy people out there, this game was perfect.

The simple management also worked nicely with the sandbox mode, for example, opening the park I’d spent ages building and managing the staff and crowds. No continuous reports of security issues, just simple, pure fun.

The game still isn’t perfect though. I won’t talk about the business side, because this game does not need it beyond the simple management and simulation. The graphics have aged, and the performance is not great in large parks. But what an amazing achievement by Frontier Developments. Loved it.