Theme Park

Theme Park cast the player as the owner of an amusement park and showed that a building game doesn't have to be about cities or war, but about getting as much money as possible out of visitors while still sending them home happy. It starts with an empty plot, a small budget and a handful of basic rides. Roller coasters, carousels, haunted houses and, above all, paths gradually get added, and paths have to lead visitors exactly where the player wants, since crowds behave according to whatever you build in their way.

The economic layer is superb. The player sets ticket prices as well as prices for individual rides, hires janitors, mechanics, entertainers and security, negotiates wages with unions, and buys supplies on a commodities exchange. The game's best-known trick is the option to adjust the amount of salt in the fries and sugar in the soda, since salty food drives visitors toward the drink stands, but overly seasoned snacks make them sick right on the roller coaster. Research unlocks better rides and faster maintenance, and roller coasters let you design your own track and set the cart's speed, which is both great fun and a fine way to bankrupt your park. Once a park is thriving, it can be sold off and you can start over on a pricier, more demanding plot elsewhere in the world.

Technically, this was a typical Bullfrog game: colorful isometric graphics, an enormous number of small animations and sounds, from carousel music to a visitor throwing up after overeating. It's exactly that humor and exaggeration that hold the whole atmosphere together; the game never takes itself too seriously. At the time, Theme Park was very successful and is still regarded today as the forerunner of an entire wave of amusement park management sims. Anyone who fires it up today will find a game with a surprisingly deep economy, one that can also be played as a calm sandbox where it's enough to build paths and watch the crowds swarm between the rides. It's precisely the difficulty settings, which switch parts of the managerial worries on and off, that make Theme Park a game suited both to complete beginners and to number-crunchers.