Transport Tycoon is a business simulation game created by Chris Sawyer and published by Microprose in 1994. This title is clearly outdated but is also a great classic as the first official mainstream release by Sawyer. Chris Sawyer is better known as the creator of the Rollercoaster Tycoon series. In fact, Transport Tycoon uses a similar but older version of the Rollercoaster Tycoon game engine. Everything is nearly the same including the graphics, menu system, and even the main screen. Rollercoaster Tycoon was a huge success but that is mainly thanks to the earlier works of Transport Tycoon.
The main objective is to build a network of transportation for various towns while generating revenue for future endeavors. As the the owner and president of a transportation company, you must create networks across the world map by building roads, trains, boats, and aircrafts. These various modes of transportation carry things like people, mail, coal, oil and goods, which provide streams of income for your business. This money can then be used to create new stations, buy new trains, lay more track, fund new industries, or replace older vehicles.
Along the way you are either working with, or battling against, other computer controlled competitors. So, there is some level of difficulty in maintaining a positive cash flow business. Sometimes they will intrude on your services, stealing resources from a local industry and lowering your income from that service. Other times, competitors can be a good thing, as they pick up the slack that perhaps you can't afford. For example, you deliver oil from the wells to a refinery, while a competitor delivers the goods from that refinery to a nearby town. And if you're lucky, those goods will make the town prosperous, thus providing a larger market for your mail delivery service. This is just one example of how complex systems can work together to create an ever changing game.
The overall gameplay is quite simple though, and thanks to the Sawyer game engine, managing your networks is easy. There are few menus and screens to juggle and information is available with one or two clicks. There is a menu for finances, trains, road vehicles, boats and planes. Then another section of menus for building roads, train tracks, docks, and airports. Once a station is built, you can access that station menu to purchase trucks, railroad cars, helicopters, and boats. Once a vehicle gets going you can access that menu to determine a route and view other helpful information. The menu system is easy once you understand how everything works, but the one lacking feature is a combined list of all systems, their incomes, what they deliver, where they are, or where they're going. These features were later addressed in Sawyer's Locomotion, but that's a review for another time. However, the game itself is still quite simple and it's easy to keep tabs on your networks despite a few annoyances.
Because this game was created in 1994, the graphics are seriously outdated by today's standards. But for a simple computer game, the amount of detail is shocking when compared to other similar games like Sim City 2000. Even though their release dates were only one year apart, Transport Tycoon came out far ahead to beat Sim City in graphics. Sim City did a good job of implementing some animation but Transport Tycoon goes overboard. Scenery is always changing with seasons, industries come alive, water sparkles, trains have exhaust, trucks smoke when broken down, airports light up, and many more little things keep the screen alive with movement. While you can zoom in and out, you can't rotate, which means buildings will sometimes block view of your stations. There are also very few options for graphics, with only one level of detail, color, and resolution. Even with all the animation, the game still looks old, like a Super Nintendo game. But for its time, the graphics were simply amazing.
Chris Sawyer does a great job creating fun little 2d environments, but the sound effects (or lack thereof) are horrible. There is generic old time jazz midi music throughout the game which can thankfully be turned down or completely off. Within the game itself, there are few sound effects. Most of these effects are vehicle related, generally upon take off, like a train horn or revving of a truck engine. Otherwise, you could potential play without speakers and still manage to walk away with equal satisfaction.
Overall, Transport Tycoon is a decent classic business simulation game from Chris Sawyer. There is also a Transport Tycoon Deluxe, which fixes bugs and adds new options and features. It's also worth noting that both games only work on Windows 98 and lower. There is a patch called TTDPatch that will allow the game to be played on most operating systems Windows ME and above. This patch also fixes more bugs, adds more options, and features a 2 player lan mode. The original is nearly impossible to find anywhere, except maybe Ebay. If you can't buy a disk or digital content, you can probably download it somewhere because the filesize is less than 10mb, although that may be illegal. In fact, there is an active community providing updates, patches, and custom game content even today. Transport Tycoon is not for everyone because it's a decade old and demands micromanagement skills, but if you're into those types of games, especially Rollercoaster Tycoon, then this is a classic game worth checking out.
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