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https://www.theguardian.com/games/2024/mar/22/rollercoaster-tycoon-at-25-its-mind-blowing-how-it-inspired-me>
"‘I remember I would rush home from school just to play
RollerCoaster
Tycoon,” recalls John Burton, a senior creative lead at Merlin Entertainments
(the owner of UK-based theme parks including Alton Towers, Chessington World of
Adventures, and Legoland Windsor) and the man designing the forthcoming 236ft
(72-metre) drop Hyperia rollercoaster at Thorpe Park. “I would then go to sleep
dreaming I could become the next Walt Disney.”
When he reflects on the game, the adult Burton speaks with the excitement of a
teenager on a sugar high. “I learned so much about how rollercoaster systems
work with their block zones, or even the little tricks of the trade at theme
parks like adding side queues and strategically placed toilets,” he continues,
confirming my suspicion that the
Jumanji-themed jungle world he helped to
design for Chessington has what he calls “subconscious similarities” to the
classic PC game’s Jolly Jungle scenario. “If I have to travel to a theme park
abroad for work, I still load up the original game on the plane and sketch out
ideas. I never really stopped playing.”
Released 25 years ago today,
RollerCoaster Tycoon (the biggest selling PC
game of 1999) achieved viral success before online virality was an established
thing, inspiring countless geo-site forum communities where users could share
designs and re-creations of their favourite real-life rides. These communities
persist even today, with one designer recently creating a nightmarish
existential rollercoaster that takes a sickening 12 years to complete.
Selling 700,000 copies in its first year, the 1999 theme park strategy game
RollerCoaster Tycoon helped keep its publisher Atari alive and kicking. Today
is its 25th anniversary.
RollerCoaster Tycoon didn’t just give millions of
fans an infinite toolbox of fun to build the theme parks of their candified
dreams (more on this later), but helped to demystify the whole adjacent theme
park industry, and make it less male dominated.
“For years and years, I remember being the only woman working on rollercoaster
projects,” says Candy Holland, executive creative director at Legoland resorts
and an industry stalwart who helped design the world’s first vertical drop
rollercoaster, Oblivion, at Alton Towers. “But when
RollerCoaster Tycoon came
out, we suddenly had a surge of young women applying for jobs. They were
utilising
RollerCoaster Tycoon to build their understanding of what, I guess,
was previously seen as a pretty niche industry.”
One of those young women was Flora Lui, senior project manager for Merlin’s
“magic making” team in California. Unlike so many of the games from its era
(
Resident Evil,
GoldenEye 007), she argues that
RollerCoaster Tycoon
traded death and destruction fantasies for joyous creativity, and therefore
attracted male and female players. “Playing
RollerCoaster Tycoon was
radical,” she says."
Via Esther Schindler.
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
