By Graham K. Rogers

I am not usually a games player, but since I have been using computers, three or four games have stood out and I always enjoyed playing them: the original SimCity, Sid Meier's Civilisation and Transport Tycoon from MicroProse. The developer of Transport Tycoon, Chris Sawyer, intended to make a new version, but moved on and created Roller Coaster Tycoon, also from MicroProse. That game has been revised. It was re-released by Aspyr Media at the beginning of the month and is available from the Mac App Store.

Roller Coaster Tycoon

With Civilisation, which was used to good effect in some teaching programs, the final success of a player's tribe depended on making the right decisions concerning technology developments (from Alphabet we can develop Writing, which itself allows other advances to be available) and the right interactions with other tribes: for example treaties or war.

Transport Tycoon brought in several modes of transportation that could be developed, depending on local resources. Building the infrastructures needed to consider the topography, population density and the competition. This was the last game I played on my 386 PC and I have missed it since that machine died. There have been a couple of attempts to resurrect this game (see below) but nothing like the development and release as a new game that it really needs.

Aspyr who are fairly well-respected in the Mac games area, now have Roller Coaster Tycoon in their stable, which includes Zoo Tycoon, and The Sims. It was released on 5 December (v. 1.0.1) and is available in the Mac App Store. The Roller Coaster Tycoon 3: Platinum package includes RollerCoaster Tycoon 3, as well as the expansions RollerCoaster Tycoon 3: Soaked! and RollerCoaster Tycoon 3: Wild.

Requirements for the game are listed as

• Operating System: 10.7.5 (Lion), 10.8.2 (Mountain Lion)
• CPU Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo (Dual-Core)
• CPU Speed: 2.2 GHz
• Hard Disk Space: 2GB free disk space
• Video Card (ATI): Radeon HD2600
• Video Card (NVidia): Geforce 8600
• Video Memory (VRam): 256 MB
• Peripherals: Macintosh mouse and keyboard

The Aspyr, Roller Coaster Tycoon pages also show the following supported Video cards:

• NVIDIA GEFORCE 8600, 8800, 9400, 9600, GT 120, 320M, 330M, 650M
• ATI RADEON HD 2600, HD 3870, HD 4670, HD 4850, HD 5670, HD 5750, HD 5770, HD 5870, HD 6490, HD 6630, HD 6750, HD 6770, HD 6970
• Intel HD Graphics 3000, 4000

There is also a notice on the Aspyr site and the Mac App Store page that the game can be run on Intel chipsets only and that it is not supported on volumes formatted as Mac OS Extended (Case Sensitive). Most modern Macs should already be formated as Mac OS Extended (Journaled).

The game is priced at $29.99 and (despite the minimum system requirements) there is a comment on the Mac App Store page that the recommended requirements are: Intel Quad Core 2.6 Ghz, 4 GB RAM or higher, and Video RAM 512 MB.

As with any such simulation game, the user's strategies are of greatest importance and the expansion packs with the game would enable a player to build a water slide or create a Safari with real (sic) animals. A "sandbox" mode also allows the user unlimited funds with which to build a park.

Transport Tycoon Updates

Time has been kind to the Open Source version at PlayTTD. It is now available online and may be played in a browser, but not as smoothly as one would hope. There is initially a fairly large download and it may need Java running (I disable this). It also makes Safari run far slower than usual.

I accessed the site on the iPhone via the browser but although it went through the process of downloading data in the same way, each time Safari crashed. I suspect that this was because of the amount of data downloaded, indicating a large transfer of data. I was able to open the game in Safari on the iPad, but like the Mac version, this stopped when I tried to generate a game scenario.

Running at last: on Firefox

On the Mac I also tried the Flock browser, but this stuck at downloading, while Firefox started up quickly and with music (I must turn that off). It allowed me to generate a scenario and begin play. A further browser I have, Radon, managed to download the data, but like Safari balked when it came to the Generate process.

Nonetheless, there is some hope here while we wait until a developer takes things in hand.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs.