Theme Park
| Developer: Bullfrog | Graphics: |
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| Publisher: Electronic Arts | Sound: |
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| Year: 1994 | Difficulty: |
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| Genre: Management | Lastability: |
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| Number of players: 1 | Rating: |
8/10 | |
The dream of every child! Build and manage your own amusement park, from A to Z, from designing roller coasters to deciding how much salt to put in the fries! The goal, naturally, is to make money (the race for profitability), and to a lesser extent, satisfy customers by offering spectacular attractions and clean toilets. The complexity level is adjustable. If all you care about is drawing roller coasters, you can indulge yourself by opting for “sandbox” mode. If, on the other hand, you prefer to dive into logistics and consult spreadsheets, turn the realism slider to maximum and dive headfirst into the financial realm: social and commercial negotiations, research and development, stock market transactions, and so on…
Theme Park is a unique simulation with pleasant graphics, very rich in content yet easy to approach thanks to a simple tutorial, complete with humorous animations. However, suffering from perhaps excessive ambition, or simply being ahead of its time, it faces serious technical issues. As the park expands, bugs and crashes pile up, and the game slows down considerably. Worse, as soon as you start getting into the details (for example, specifying a path for the janitors), you’ll be tearing your hair out trying to get the desired behavior, and playing under these conditions becomes incredibly frustrating.
Despite the real appeal early on, I have very bad memories of this game because I always end up quitting in a fit of rage after one of my attractions suddenly explodes while my hordes of technicians gaze at the sky, stuffing themselves with sandwiches…
As for the soundtrack: four notes played on a loop, with the unfortunate sound effects faithfully recreating the activity of park visitors. Take mine, for instance: vomiting, everywhere, all the time.
Two sequels followed on PC: Theme Park World (1999), then Theme Park Inc (2001).
Also check out the Rollercoaster Tycoon series (PC, 1999–2004), and of course, its cousin Theme Hospital (PC, 1997).
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