Roller Coaster Tycoon Classic review – A masterful management classic

Tycoon games on the PC in the ’90s were everywhere. Hasbro Interactive and Atari pumped these games out like nobody’s business. If you were looking for business or management simulation games in the late 90s, Roller Coaster Tycoon gave you a creative twist that others couldn’t compete with. What became a long-standing franchise with four mainline games and spinoffs released primarily on PC and mobile. We’re now at Roller Coaster Tycoon Classic, originally released for mobile phones in 2016 before shortly thereafter making its way to PC in 2017, we now have the 2024 Switch port, the first console port for Roller Coaster Tycoon 1 since the original Xbox as well as the first ever console port of Roller Coaster Tycoon 2.

A combination of Roller Coaster Tycoon 1, all of its original expansions, and Roller Coaster Tycoon 2, along with all of its expansions. You are getting a shocking amount of theme park Management in this game. You’re adjusting prices, building roller coasters, hiring staff, naming rides, feeding guests, selling merch, and more. There are so many options and things to do in this game. I can’t help but be excited. Roller Coaster Tycoon 1 was a childhood Classic of mine so bias is definitely playing a role here. Let’s be honest. But sometimes you can’t top what already was the best. Roller Coaster Tycoon Classic takes all the content from those iconic games and expansions and gives you a much more streamlined experience on the switch. You can play the entire thing with a controller and for the most part, it works pretty well.

The control stick moves an in-game cursor, styled after a 90s computer mouse cursor, while the right stick controls the overhead view. I do have a few nitpicks, though. Most actions have to be performed with the A button. The D-pad kind of works for menus but it’s not intuitive, and it’s a little clunky, rotating or lifting up construction jobs with the D-pad is also not good enough since you have to get things positioned just right and can’t lock something in place while you adjust it, and the frame rate is a little choppy when you zoom out.

Controls are a little clunky when building bigger rides, but for the most part, this control scheme actually works well enough. Overall, I think they did the best they could with it but I would like to see some tweaks and improvements. A gyro aim-based cursor mode would be nice! It was confirmed touch controls may happen in a patch so there’s hope for more features.

But what is your objective in these simulation games? Stuff like Flight Simulator or The Sims certainly aren’t known for their narrative chops. Roller Coaster Tycoon Classic is not going to give you any sort of narrative explanation for what you’re doing. What you have is a series of theme park challenges you take on. Reaching certain Park values by certain dates, reaching a certain amount of guests in your park by a certain date, and many more, but generally, those two are the goal. I was only able to play through the original set of courses, but there are dozens of them here. Truly an insane amount of content to challenge yourself with the simulation mechanics. What might work in one theme park, may not necessarily work in another.

There are dozens of things to account for from weather to the time of year, whether or not your park has water in it or the amount of trees in your park, and even stuff like land elevation you need to keep in mind. More than a handful of times you’ll have to pull out the shovel tool and raise or lower landscapes so that you can build something in its place.

This brings up a good point. You don’t have to build every ride. If you’re someone who enjoys stuff like Mario Maker or Little Big Planet, you’ll get a kick out of being able to design your own custom tracks for roller Coasters with loops, twists, turns, and even photo booths to make a little extra money on the side. But if you’re not the creative type like myself, there are already dozens of pre-built roller Coasters, log flume rides, stand-up roller Coasters, boat rides, merry-go-rounds, go-karts, and my personal favorite, the pizza shop. Hell yeah.

You’re able to customize the price of everything in Roller Coaster Tycoon besides the admission of the park itself. Park admission used to be adjustable in the original PC release but not here. All the aforementioned rides and shops can have their prices adjusted to what you want. Maybe you only charge a dollar for the park map at your info kiosk, but you’ll charge $5 for, and this is real. The Lobotomizer, is a real Six Flags branded roller coaster you can put into the game for over $10,000. Speaking of which, only five of the Six Flags amusement parks are represented here? No representation for Illinois? This is heresy. Go Bears.

Prices are a very fickle beast. Over time, the value of rides will depreciate even if they are popular with guests. Eventually, guests won’t want to pay a dollar fifty for the haunted house ride so you will need to drop the price, therefore lowering the amount of profit it can bring you. There are a lot of intricate systems on play and a lot of them you’ll discover as you play through the tips. Normally loading screen tips are not super helpful or can outright make the player feel like they’re being talked down to but for a game as intricate as Roller Coaster Tycoon with dozens of unseen moving parts, no pun intended, it really helps add to the experience as you learn new techniques such as how weather will affect certain guests or rides, how prices can change the flow of your Park, and so many others. What’s great is that the select button gives you an options menu that lets you turn off those features if you so desire.

As you chip away at the dozens of challenge maps they have in the game, you’ll learn the tricks and trades of managing your theme park in Roller Coaster Tycoon Classic. One of the early challenge maps, Dynamite dunes, gives you a really sick roller coaster up front and your goal is just to expand the park with new rides and reach a certain amount of value and guest numbers by a certain date. I was able to make a dope park with the standard fare of Ferris wheels and twisting rides while also adding something that would be a little more unique for a park in the desert, a water ride. Even during the summer months when it’s 89°F/31°C, I ran a promotional campaign for free drinks in the park. There are a lot of creative ways to increase your Park’s value and guest numbers.

Honestly, it can be a bit overwhelming at first, or at least when just reading all of these mechanics playing into each other. But the game has a tutorial, and it teaches you the ropes and along the way you’ll learn the intricacies of the game. This isn’t a difficult game by any means. Only one map really tripped me up and honestly, I just started a new file and the second time I went at it, I completely aced it because I knew what worked and what didn’t the second time around.

As I mentioned before, the challenge mode helps the player learn the game mechanics and utilizing their own creativity around those mechanics. But there’s also a free mode where you can build anything you want, and just go for as long as you can. I don’t think that’s a mode I would ever find enjoyment in because I like having objectives but Roller Coaster Tycoon Classic gives every player so many options for how they want to tackle the game.

Yes, the core gameplay of building rides, adjusting prices, etc is all Roller Coaster Tycoon is. But I think this is a game you can get dozens of hours of enjoyment from if you enjoy something that rewards experimentation and trying new things. There are a few issues like the pathfinding for staff can be somewhat finicky, the game does chug quite a bit when you zoom out, the controls could definitely use some work, but I think Roller Coaster Tycoon Classic is a great game that I hope leads to something more in the future.

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