More Bullfrog goodness. If they could prove it was chemically addictive, Theme Park would be the video game equivalent of class A drugs. With less side effects - but be prepared for your family life to nose-dive in much the same way.
It's a Theme park simulator. You open a park, place some rides and hire a few cleaners. Then the little punters, I mean valued customers start complaining; "I'm thirsty". So you build a coffee shop. "I'm hungry". So you build a burger stand. "I'm bored!" so you hire a guy in Shark suit and so on. The more you build rides, the more ticket sales you get, the more the complaints roll in. So the more you need to build infrastructure but the more infrastructure you have, the more people and 'stuff' you need to support it.
Everything costs: It costs to get in, it costs to buy a burger but then the guy in the Shark Suit doesn't come cheap, neither do the rides and the APR on the loan you have, can end the game. If you raise ticket prices - fewer people come to the park - so you lower ticket prices or should I have built more rides?
The whole game is finely balanced. It is in retrospect the balance that makes the game. Theme Park is neither a chore nor impossible - it is a fair challenge - a challenge that spurs you on. You are always just winning but suddenly you'll find there is too much litter and you are just about losing, so you hire a cleaner and start to win again - but the increased salary bill means you have to raise ticket prices and then the little gits start to complain again.
Each game goes the same way - You start to feel the whole Park is ultimately doomed but something pushes you to try and beat it. But in the back of your mind the doubt sets in - Should I have set the ticket price lower to start with...? Or higher? Should I have focused on planting trees and shrubs from the start? Is there too much pathway? But you keep going and the park either fails or succeeds and your bid for world theme park domination is one step closer or further. Yet every park you start you get all the same nagging doubts.
The only thing that shows its age is the advert for Midland Bank during the obligatory 3d rendered introduction.
A fine, fine, fine game.
Rare enough to keep the prices high!
3DO Kid.
cool blog, still have my 360, one of my faves is Twisted. Do you have Ultraman Powered, I used to have the jap copy but traded it in, classic flop of a machine!