RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 has officially hit the shelves as the sequel to the best-selling original game, and with this new game comes improvements to just about every aspect of RollerCoaster Tycoon, in addition to new rides and coaster types that have been on coaster enthusiasts' RCT wishlists since the original game.
Being the much-improved and reworked program that this is, projects created using the original RollerCoaster Tycoon and the following two expansions are not compatible with the new program code. RollerCoaster Tycoon and RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 are completely seperate games, however, so if you still have the original installed you will still have the ability to view the older parks with it and jump between games. But I, for one, see this as an opportunity to start fresh, forget about my previous work and really put the new features to work to create the most realistic parks and tracks ever possible in RCT.
From the minute you install RollerCoaster Tycoon 2, you'll notice the updates and new goodies. Trainers, for the most part, will be a thing of the past for those of us looking to unlock the full potential of the game, with such options as the new Scenario Editor allowing you to set your own boundaries and limits in maps now expandable to sizes far beyond the previous maximum, or choose the right placing for the main entrance of your latest park recreation.
You won't need cheats either to allow the stacking of scenery any longer, as well as for getting your guests to navigate their own ways through multi-grid-wide paths, or for such tasks as clearing an entire area of trees, or even placing water fountains on land.
But the main thing in RCT2 that will have all of us coaster fanatics grinning from ear to ear is the widely-expanded selection of new types of thrillrides. In the attraction selection windown, you'll now find all of the latest innovations of the coaster world - Arrow 4th Dimension coaster, Vekoma Super Invertigo, B&M Prone, Intamin Giga, Giovanola Hyper-Twister, Intamin Impulse... And then older favorites like Premier LIM, spinning Wild Mouse, new flat rides, two completely new Schwarzkopf types, along with updates to nearly every ride type we already had.
In the scenery department, we now have a selection of new themes ranging from Pirate to Wild West, waterfalls and other various aqua effects, banners to place on our rides, improved categorizing, and perhaps most modified of all, a new method for creating walls and roofs for buildings using premade objects from the selection.
There are a few minor downsides with RCT2, for instance a large land face now takes a good amount of time to apply 'walls' to, several options have been eliminated such as the 'window' setting for the game, now the only settings are for full-screen resolutions, and loading parks now takes a considerable amount of time as opposed to the original game, but the positives far outweigh.
All-in-all, the upgrades and additions make RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 well worth the price tag, and more addictive than ever. Congratulations to Chris Sawyer for pulling off a worthy sequel to an already incredible game!
