The Thrills and Heartfelt Memories of RollerCoaster Tycoon
Reflecting back on one of my favorite video games of all time, the unique memories that went along with it, and why RollerCoaster Tycoon is still worth playing!
The Joy of the Theme Park
Being raised in North Texas had its ups and downs.
During the summer, the heat was always terrible and definitely counted as a major downside — a mixture of humid mugginess with a touch of hellfire!
One of the major benefits though was being within driving distance to Six Flags Over Texas!
Back then, it was a super fun experience to go to this theme park! The rides were amazing, the cartoon and superhero themes were a delight as a kid, and the roller coasters were incredibly exciting! We usually went during the summer, so the summer heat was dreadful, but bearable for the thrills we all had!
Just a quick background on the park: Six Flags Over Texas was the original Six Flags theme park that started up in the early 1960s — yeah, it’s old! The park can be seen from miles around because of its huge oil derrick observation tower, as well as many of the other tall rides and roller coasters that can be seen from a distance! By the time I was going there as a kid in the 2000s, it had mostly exploded into a Looney Tunes experience with the classic Warner Bros. cartoon characters all over the place, along with plenty of superheroes from the DC Universe. It was fun, and they maintained some of the older theming that mixed in pretty well with the Warner Bros. setup! This is a great video that went over the 2000s at this park!
As soon as the family car parked and I stepped out, I remember hearing the distant roar of La Vibora (The Viper), which was the colorful steel bobsled coaster that occupied a large space in the Spain section of the park. When walking from the parking lot, my heart would be racing in anticipation and excitement from the amazing sounds coming out of the park! La Vibora seriously sounded like a roaring jet every time one of the bobsleds would fly overhead!
It was a thrill to run towards the best rides once we got checked-in through the main entrance! I had my favorites, especially the wooden coasters, which included the insane Texas Giant, the ancient Runaway Mine Train, or the smaller and rickety Judge Roy Scream! I also loved Shock Wave, which was a double-looping steel roller coaster. Batman: The Ride, an inverted roller coaster, and Mr. Freeze, a launched shuttle coaster, were also among my favorites out of the Gotham City section of the park!
The smell of fresh funnel cakes and hot, soft pretzels, the sounds of people either laughing with joy or screaming their heads off, and the blistering heat on my skin from the Texas sun always made for a memorable and amazing trip to Six Flags Over Texas when I was a kid!
My memories at that theme park meant the world to me, because as soon as I got home, I would almost always continue the adventure — just in a more virtual space to create more memories!
RollerCoaster Tycoon was loaded up on the family’s PC, and I would jump into its isometric world all the time growing up, building up more memories that were based on that game!
This title expanded my perspective of what video games could be, even as a kid.
I want to take a look back at this wonderful game and some of the experiences I had with it growing up, and why you should give it a try if you’ve never played it before! Even now, I often launch it up and play around for a bit. It’s such a relaxing game, and one that helped pave my gaming life since then!
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First off though, I want to extend my warmest welcome and send my thanks to you for the privilege and honor of your time!
My name is Joe, and The Saved Game is my gaming hub that is a space about video game nostalgia, new and old favorites, and finding ways to rekindle your love for why you played video games in the first place! Read more here about my Substack page and content!
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Where it All Began
Before I ever considered playing RollerCoaster Tycoon in the late 1990s, because I was way too young, it had already hit the store shelves right before the summer of ‘99.
By January of 2000, Chris Sawyer announced on the news section of his website that RollerCoaster Tycoon, the game he developed and designed in the years prior, became the top-selling PC game in 1999!
By 2002, it was reported in a Computer Gaming World magazine (No. 216. p. 42) that this isometric, roller coaster-building, simulation game had sold 4 million copies!
When he was asked about how he first considered making a game about roller coasters in an interview published on Medium in 2024, Chris said that he was trying to find some inspiration back around 1996 or 1997 when he was working hard on Transport Tycoon 2, while also becoming fascinated by roller coasters around that time.
At the same time [while working on Transport Tycoon 2] I was developing quite an interest in rollercoasters, a fascination with their design and engineering, and I’d also played games like Theme Park which included crude representations of rollercoasters. It got to the point where I needed to take a break from Transport Tycoon 2 and have a bit of fun playing around with other ideas for a while…
— Chris Sawyer, Medium (2024)
Apparently, those “other ideas” are what turned into RollerCoaster Tycoon, with Chris playing around with his newfound love and sincere fascination of roller coasters that mixed in well with his unique style of game design.
When chatting about his day-to-day life in a Eurogamer interview later on in 2016, Chris talked about his games, hobbies, and life. He says that he loves to help out volunteering in his community as part of a media team for a local primary school, and the hobby he mentioned? You might’ve guessed it, but he made sure to mention riding roller coasters! So much so, that in a community Q&A that was published on Medium, Chris mentioned with a hint of pride in his words: “I’ve now ridden around 770 different rollercoasters around the world”!
In that interview with Eurogamer, he mentioned a fascinating tidbit about his ideation process on the games he made back then, which I can tell how his thoughts here absolutely spilled over into RollerCoaster Tycoon:
Looking back now though perhaps there’s a Lego-like philosophy to my games. They’re games where you build things block-by-block in a rather simplistic and restrictive environment, and then interact with those models to keep things working well, improving and re-building things when needed and being rewarded for constructive skills and good management.
— Chris Sawyer, Eurogamer (2016)
When I read that, as well as some of his other statements about his love for roller coasters and the games he made in the 1990s and early 2000s, it made it pretty clear to me that he had a lot of passion and heart for his games, with a focus on creativity and classic game-building. The Lego comparison he made was amazing, because that is exactly what I think of when it comes to a game like RollerCoaster Tycoon.
Chris Sawyer is a name I don’t think I’ll ever forget. His name was all over the RollerCoaster Tycoon games I loved when I eventually played them in the early 2000s, right around 2002 or so when I was finally introduced to the first one!
I think, in a game like RollerCoaster Tycoon, it’s easy to see how well-crafted it is because of how well it runs, how fun it is, and how fantastic the gameplay is! As I’ve gotten older, I tend to appreciate it so much more, but absolutely loved it in the early days when I first picked it up!
The Early Days
I mentioned in the intro that I loved going to Six Flags Over Texas, with a love I had for the roller coasters and other thrilling rides!
But, I also loved Legos, demolition toys, and anything else that could get my mind thinking creatively. So, I would often end up at toy stores growing up, such as Toys “R” Us and others!
Around 2002 or so, I remember being in a Toys “R” Us store, looking around at the wide variety of toys and games they had! Off in one of the corners of the store was their video game section, with so many games from that time period. I remember walking along the bright linoleum tiles and looking through all the games. They had Nintendo games with the Game Boy and N64, the PlayStation, and some PC games. The PC games were along the back wall, but I remember looking around and spotting RollerCoaster Tycoon, and definitely some of the expansion packs too! Likewise, I remember seeing this game everywhere, including Target, Fry’s Electronics, Walmart, CompUSA, and many more places! I even have vague memories of it being included as a bonus in cereal boxes!
It was likely a no-brainer for my parents to pick it up for me at some point around 2002 or so. At the time, I’m sure they had no idea what game it was or the impact it already had on the gaming world, and I eventually got it installed on the computer at home once I got it!
I remember being blown away by how fast it was on that old family PC, how incredible the camera perspective was, how detailed the gameplay could be, and how much creative control I had in a world that I could live out my dream of building roller coasters and creating theme parks that were just like Six Flags! It was easy to learn too, with a simplistic UI that just made sense.
Previous to this, the only other game I remember playing that was remotely similar was a Lego game called Lego Loco, and while it was fun and allowed you to place down trains and tracks using Legos, it was shockingly boring to me back when I was a kid.
On the other hand, RollerCoaster Tycoon hit me in so many other ways that made me love it! It gave me the thrill of having control over a theme park, similar to Six Flags (at least in my mind!), and I had so much more freedom to make choices that impacted my park, in good ways or bad, (and yes, I still feel slightly bad for all the crashes and drownings I caused back then 😂)!
The maps were often vibrant, using a wonderful blend of colors, and had music that fit the game so well! Seriously, there are some tunes from that game that still live rent-free in my head all these years later. The challenges were fun in the parks, and I loved completing them to the applause of all the guests, all while I could just keep building onto the park for however long I wanted to!
It was important too that successfully finishing a map unlocked a new one. I felt as though I had fresh challenges and rewards all the time, with each map offering a unique challenge specific to its theme. It gave me a great incentive to work towards a successful completion.
The themes in each park were very unique, and offered a lot for my imagination! The spooky parks were a favorite of mine to work towards, and I loved the maps that were “abandoned”, where you had to rebuild the roller coasters with certain ratings! The expansion packs I eventually picked up were amazing too, and built on top of an already incredible game.
This game offered so much fun when I was a kid, and while I loved it, there’s a lot of things I only picked up on years later!
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Looking Back, Over 25 Years Later
It wasn’t too long ago that I ended back at Six Flags Over Texas, maybe around 2024 or so!
It was fun, but a lot had changed. Some rides were simply gone, due to being replaced or just getting too old. La Vibora, the steel bobsled coaster, sadly got shut down and removed recently, as seen in the segment linked below. Some areas were renamed, and a lot of the classic Looney Tunes characters were gone.
I still had a good time, and rode some of the rides I loved as a kid! It was great to see newer generations being able to enjoy the rides and making their own memories! The heat was still dreadful, but it was all good!
But, even nowadays, I’ll still launch up RollerCoaster Tycoon to recreate the nostalgic memories of my childhood! The memories I have are wonderful, and are a mix of my love for real-world roller coasters, like the ones from Six Flags, as well it just being a good game.
The thing is, is that I have never been able to truly figure out why RollerCoaster Tycoon is so good. People of all ages still love this game and the series still has a wonderfully committed community behind it!
I think it has a unique quality behind it that people greatly appreciate. The hard work and level of technical dedication Chris Sawyer put into it has been noticed by many over the years, and the gameplay is fantastic. You had such a wonderful amount of control over the creativity, that you could do so many things to really build out your vision.
If you wanted to build out a massive park with beautiful scenery and giant roller coasters, you could do that!
If you wanted to charge guests money to use the bathrooms… first off, how dare you! But, you could do that if you really wanted to 😂
If you wanted to create detailed themes for different sections on your park, you could just focus on that!
You could do so much, where your creativity was rarely limited!
It also had a wonderful sense of realism that was masterfully mixed in with the wacky design. The fact that the guests had thoughts, a set amount of money, and their own personal details amazed me! The weather system, while pretty basic, added in a good amount of immersion as well! Rides breaking down, guests complaining, money getting tight, and the inevitable ride crash happening made the scenarios believable.
So, why should you play a game that is over 25 years old at this point? Seriously, this game is old enough to have graduated college and settled down with a small family at this point, so why on earth is it worth your time!?
Simply put, it’s worth it for the memories you can make in it, with this game being unique enough that the experiences you build will be easily tied to it!
When I look back, I realize that the memories I’ve built in RollerCoaster Tycoon aren’t necessarily because of it just being a good game. Now, it is a damn good game, but it was uniquely ‘RollerCoaster Tycoon'! It was, to me, quite unforgettable in the best of ways!
All the memories I have, like the trips to Six Flags, seeing it on display for the first few times at Toys “R” Us, and the many other times when I just felt like jumping into its joyful world were memories that stuck with me because I built them in and around such a unique game! I don’t think it mattered how old or young I was when I played it, because the memories I have were tied to that wonderfully isometric world!
Give this amazing game of RollerCoaster Tycoon a try if you haven’t already, I promise you won’t regret it! If you have already played it, then maybe jump back into it to make some more unique memories of your own! Trust me, while time changes, your memories won’t, and you’ll be glad you made some more in this game!
I want to give a big thanks as well to Chris Sawyer for creating this game! I’ve had some of my favorite gaming memories in this title, and it complemented different times of my life so well and I definitely have an emotional attachment to it!
Video games have a way of positively impacting people’s lives, even if they are just roller coaster-building simulation games!
Thank you for the honor and privilege of your time! It means a lot that you’re here, and I appreciate your readership!
If this article meant something to you and you enjoyed it, then please drop some love on it down below, share it with some friends or foes, and let me know your thoughts! I always appreciate the feedback 🙌
See you all next time,
Joe
What are Your Thoughts
I want to hear from you!
Did you ever play RollerCoaster Tycoon? What were your memories with it?
Did you ever get a chance to go to a theme park yourself? How did you enjoy your time there, and did you ever relate it back to a video game?
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I recently repurchased this game and shared it with my children. It's still one of my favorite games of all time and they enjoyed it just as much as I did growing up. Thank you for writing this.
Great article! I have so many fond memories playing this game as a child and with my younger brother. It definitely feel lucky to have experienced this game as a kid. Glad you had nice memories too!