From: "SYSTEM MANAGER" Path: menudo.uh.edu Organization: Blob Shop Programmers Subject: REVIEW: RailRoad Tycoon Keywords: game, strategy, simulation Distribution: world Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.reviews Followup-To: comp.sys.amiga.games Reply-To: "SYSTEM MANAGER" Rail Road Tycoon by MicroProse is yet another in a series of "half-baked" ports to the Amiga. The base game, however, is excellent and if you can stand bad ports you may want to pick this beast up. It is manual copy protected and only runs under 1.3 -- $49.95 MicroProse, who has given the Amiga community such greats as GunShip, F-15 Strike Eagle and M1 Tank Platoon has once again hired MPS Labs in the UK to do their porting. MPS certainly lived up to their previous efforts with this software. Rail Road Tycoon gives you the opportunity to manage a RailRoad company in either the old West, Europe or North Eastern United States. The game play is similar to that of Sim City. You, as the manager of your business must lay track, purchase and schedule trains and, if you wish, handle individual train movement. You also have other railroads attempting to put you out of business by nasty stock dealings as well as by Rate Wars between railroads. When the game starts you select whether you are a investor, financier, mogul or tycoon. You then decide how you want train dispatching handled, whether you have a simple or complex economy and how friendly your competition is. Your selections determine the overall difficulty of the game. You are given one million dollars to start your railroad with. You can get more cash by selling 500,000 dollar bonds at various interest rates (depending on the current economic condition). It is best to survey the areas in the region of the world you have chosen to play in. You want to locate an area that is dense with cities as well as natural resources. After you pick a good starting area you begin to lay track. It is important to lay your track carefully. The early trains of the late 1860s were not very powerful so any grade over 1.75% will have significant impact on the overall speed of your trains. Once you have connected one city to another, you need to build a station. There are five different types of stations: Switching Tower, Depot, Station and a Terminal. Each of these stations service the surrounding area, with the switching tower serving its own square and with the terminal handling up to 5 squares away from the station. When you build your first station you will also build a engine shop. This engine shop will be the manufacturing area for your different trains. You can upgrade depots, stations and terminals that you might build elsewhere along your track to have engine shops. Later in the game you will find this very valuable. Once you build a station you build your first train. You are presented with a little animation of a engine exiting the engine shop. You then can add cars to the train and send it on its way. You can at each station change the 'consist' which is the list of cars your train is to pick up at the various stations along the way. You continue to build tracks and linking city to city until either you run out of funds or the fiscal year ends. You might also consider buying treasury stock so that your investors can't fire you, or you might purchase stock from one of your competitors. In one game I had a blast forcing a company out of business by taking control of the E&C railroad. I kept taking money from them until they could not pay their bills. Finally in a nice gesture I sold all of my stock and they went into debt trying to save E&C. Needless to say I lost my shirt on the stock, but it was great to see this railroad go under! When the fiscal year ends you get your annual report. This report contains your income statement for the year, your balance sheet and the stock information. Study the stock information as it will tell you a lot. IF you see a stock suddenly rise you might want to invest in that railroad, or if you see stock prices fall you might want to sell your stock. Your stock holders are conscious of your stock decisions! You play the game for one hundred years, at that time you are forced into retirement. If you have done well enough you will be given a job ranging from hobo (takes no skill to get that job!) to the President of the United States. In my gaming I have only been given a job as a Mayor. The good points: - The game is not disk copy protected - The game does install on a hard disk - Game has decent amount of depth, though some of the newspaper news items get a bit repetitious after a time The bad points: - The game advertises that it runs on _all_ Amigas. What it doesn't say is that A3000 users must use 1.3! I contacted MicroProse on this problem and they simply said "they have no plans to correct this" and that they felt that 2.0 was not significant because only A3000s currently have it. On the surface this seems quite reasonable. However, don't let MicroProse fool you. RR Tycoon seems to be breaking several of the rules published in the RKM. The keyboard interface is broken (real slow text entry on a A3000!). There is _no_ reason for this program to be written just to run under 1.3. - Graphics are 'ok', not real exciting - There seems to be a bug in reloading games, track areas seem to disappear though the trains do not de-rail - Game will crash in low-memory conditions All in all a great game that suffers from the work of MPS labs. If RR Tycoon got a slight face lift I would recommend it to everyone. As it is now, you should return it to the store telling the store manager that if it doesn't run under 2.0, you don't want it. In my opinion it is important for the game manufactures to understand that half-hearted ports that do not run under 1.3 and 2.0 will not be accepted by the Amiga community. The only way to get their attention is to boycott products that do not perform. RR Tycoon is a product that is a perfect example. This is a game with great game play and yet it suffers from a crummy programming job. There is simply no excuse. 2.0 is the future of _all_ Amigas--make the software companies understand! +------------------------------------------------------+ ///// | Mark D. Manes | ///// | email: manes@vger.nsu.edu | ///// | phone: (804) 683-2532 | \\\\\///// +------------------------------------------------------+ \\\\// Amiga! "Ohh say can you C!"