Today's game is a simulation/strategy game titled Theme Park. Theme Park is one of the very first and best Theme Park simulations. This title is dos based so you will need to dig out your copy of dosbox. Without further ado...
I was 13 years old when I started reading PC Gamer, a brand new British PC games magazine. As much as I loved the magazine, though (even with my limited knowledge of English at the time), I enjoyed the cover disks even more. Oh yes, on the cover of each issue, two 3.5" disks were attached with cellotape. And these disks didn't just contain any old crappy games! Oh no, every issue had a demo of a certified classic! Beneath A Steel Sky, Micro Machines, UFO Enemy Unknown, Dragonsphere and many many more! Most of these games are now all-time favorites and deservedly so!
But let's get to the point. One such demo was, as you may have guessed already, Theme Park. The same issue of PC Gamer had the review with plenty of screenshots and a 95% score. If that didn't convince me, the demo certainly did. What the screenshots didn't (and couldn't) show, was the tremendous atmosphere that Theme Park creates. Cheering kids, screams as pundits go down the rollercoaster, the merry sounds of rides and so much more! No other theme park game has gotten anywhere near this brilliant mood and it's small things like this that set Theme Park apart from the crowd, even 15 years later!
The game itself is amazing as well. You got an enormous park to do with as you please! You can place rides, shops, decorations or entertainers and each has tons of choices avilable which you can research and then add to your park. You even get rewards according to how well designed your park is.
But while doing all this, you need to be clever as well: keep the ticket prices fairly priced, raise prices of drink shops and then add more salt to the fry shop next door (after all, people will get thirsty from all that salt!) and you'll make a killing! Set the right speed on rides to avoid them breaking down or else you'll need to send out a repairman! Oh, and if people throw their wrappers and other trash on the pathways, you need to get staff to clean up the mess. Heck, you can even let them mow the lawn to get rid of the gastly weeds! Of course, planting trees and flowers of your own is a good move as well.
Everything affects everything: a dirty park will make pundits unhappy but so will high prices, boring rides, confusing pathways (you can place signs to avoid this) but also weather which is unavoidable (you can make entertainers pass out umbrellas when it starts to rain and storm, though).
The game really has so much on offer: staff negotiations, restocking of food for the shops, research for better and more rides and other items, awards at the end of the year to show you how well you're doing and if you're tired of one park, why not buy another?
Theme Park is a perfect example of why the early 90's were a goldmine of gaming brilliance. This game is PACKED with features yet also manages to be incredibly charming with a tremendous eye for detail. Rollercoaster Tycoon may beat it in terms of strategic depth, but the charm of Theme Park is yet to be surpassed. Bullfrog at its best ...
Download:
http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/4753/Theme+Park.html
