Growing up in the PC boom era, I stumbled across this game originally. I bought the Corkscrew Follies Expansion pack as well. I’d play this game for hours upon end frequently.
Later when RCT 3 came out for PC, I purchased it as well. I did not like 3 as much as I did the original. My opinion was there was too much eye candy to “ride” the coasters and such.
Eventually, I lost the original RCT disk and once thought I would never play it again. Randomly, one time while shopping, I found RCT 2 on sale and found it to be extremely similar to the original and loved it as much as the first RCT.
As I got older, RCT went to the wayside in my life. Also, due to PC operating systems and compatibility difference’s my ability to play RCT eventually diminished.
Several years ago, I downloaded the RCT4 app for iPhone and thought that the game was decent. I played it a lot but did not like that limits in how to play it. I personally think in App purchases are solely gimmicks to get your money and avoid most games that it seemed like you had to spend money to make progress.
At one time I gave up on RCT due to freezing and crashing issues I never reported. I recently downloaded RCT4 again on a whim to attempt to play it again and found a few bug issues.
Luckily, shortly after downloading RCT4 again, I found this original game in the App Store. Being $6, I wanted to try it. After the initial start of playing it, I found it to be exact like the original from the late 90’s. After playing my first scenario, I found within the app, an ability to make an additional purchase to allow for Park creation and expansion. Of course, with this being a “Tycoon” game, I love the ability to make a massive park layout and pre-create what you would like for your park to be, well before spending any game money to build what you may want. I laid out the land, with water and walkways just to start, then create my own scenario in which is relatively easy to fulfill to “win” the scenario.
RCT 1 has pre set parks and did not allow for much expansion outside of land that was available for purchase. After I would “win” the scenario, I would eventually remove everything on the land and flatten in to make a level park, and start over again by rebuilding the park how I wanted to. RCT2 would allow for park scenario creation as well as the expansion in this app will do so as well.
Creating a park is not a complicated process due to following instructions. As far as items you can build in the game either to start with or have developed through the internal funding program, I make them all available at the start of my custom scenario.
My thoughts are that IF you want high definition graphics, this game is not for you. This game is the PC version on an apple product. I love it and I am happy that Atari and Chris Sawyer have brought this game to the Apple store. The biggest downfall is the size of the map and the need to maneuver with a small screen, being on my iPhone 6s Plus. I would say a large iPad would be easier to play on. But, I will not own a phone that cannot fit in my pocket just to play a game on a bigger screen.
Ultimately, I am glad this game made a come back to the modern technology. Hopefully other old software games will be retrofitted similar to RCT. I recall many “Tycoon” games from the Y2K era that were fun to play!