A genre of games that my personal gaming history is severely lacking in is that of the theme park sim. In my youth I focused very much on action games, partially because I was only a console gamer (the family PC had very few games). So going into this game, I don't have much gaming experience to draw on. To at least judge by its cover, as all wise people do, the game seems to have a large focus on rollercoasters.
Theme parks in Australia are almost entirely confined to the Gold Coast in the state of Queensland, a far cry from South Australia where I call home. However, that is not to say I have no theme park nor coaster experience. It is just in the limited real-life version that an 80s South Australian kid had access to. The first coaster I ever rode on was the "mad mouse" at the Royal Adelaide Show. This coaster was a staple of Adelaide, mostly because it was the only coaster in Adelaide, and only available for 2 weeks a year.
Small, two person karts would ride around the rickety metal track, rapidly jerking around tight corners. On multiple occasions, the kart would feel like it was going to throw itself off the track as it would rapdily turn 90 degrees on an edge. It was an experience that I certainly did not care for at the time. The coaster was eventually shut down in 2007, presumably due to age (there was a minor accident in 2004 which probably did not help). If you're curious, you can view some extremely bad 2007 flip-camera footage of the final run. In recent years, a new coaster has been set up in the Royal Adelaide Show, but I have yet to see it, let alone ride it. Or, more likely, not ride it.
There was one other coaster in Adelaide, but it was only active for a very short time. In the late 1980s, an ill-fated and very expensive building was constructed in Adelaide, the Myer Centre. This billion dollar centre included in its top 2 floors what should have been every child's dream: a theme park which included bumper cars, arcade machines, and yes, and indoor figure 8 rollercoaster. The Myer centre has what is effectively a hollow centre running up the middle, with small bridges criss-crossing on every floor. This rollercoaster existed entirely over this drop from the 8th floor down to the basement. It was terrifying. Something about it being inside, with walls and bridges cascading down, made the height feel more threatening. So as you might expect, I rode it once and then never again.
The Myer Centre was a colossal failure. It was sold for only $140 million some years later. Dazzeland was shuttered after only a few years. The skeletal remains of the coaster track remained unused for a further 5 years. A shopping centre underneath what was effectively an abandoned amusement park was certainly an odd thing.
And finally, there comes the other theme park that was popular in South Australia, Puzzle Park. While it lacked a coaster, it was filled with a collection of attractions that would almost certainly not pass modern safety standards. Splintered multi-story wooden mazes, water slides that don't feel like they built the walls on the corners quite high enough, and huge steel slides that seem designed more to sear the legs of children in the hot Australian sun more than for anything fun.
The park was abandoned many years ago, as the requirement for public liability insurance spelled the end for this... well public liability. The property has changed hands many times over the years, every time a new plan to redevelop. And to this day, nothing has been successful, with only the abandoned rusty towers remaining.
Now, you might be thinking: wow, Connell sure avoided talking about the game for a while! And... you are correct. Unfortunately, this game is very middling, so there isn't a lot to say. Probably the most interesting thing about this game is the expectations it sets that it fails to meet, but not even in a disastrous way. Just disappointing.
The game does have two high points of note, albeit points that represent only a fraction of the game. Firstly is the theme song that goes far harder than it has any right to.
The second high point is the absurd plot. Evil capitalist mind-controlling clowns from rival theme parks are hypnotising your parks mascots in an attempt to steal the blueprints to a rollercoaster.
That is certainly a choice that was made. And I respect it.
The game itself is very much what you would expect for the genre. As you start your park, you have some attractions and visitors, and you use money to upgrade the facilities to attract more visitors and earn more money and thus build and upgrade even more facilities, and so on. Ordinarily with this sort of game, you would start to feel a push and pull here, with the costs to maintain facilities threatening to cut into profits, but at least for the first park, this never happened.
Many of the facilities correspond to a playable mini-game. Unfortunately, this is where the mandatory touch-screen gimmicks come in to play. Each of these mini-games are replications of standard side-alley faire. Shooting hoops, throwing darts, and so on. Unfortunately, the controls are all very inconsistent, being less a test of accuracy and more a test of patience.
What should be the crown jewel of this game is the coasters. And unfortunately, it is one of the most basic and boring tasks in the game. When building a coaster, the majority of it is already set. Rather than being completely customisable, as you might expect on a system with a touch screen, only a few small sections can be customised, and even then, only by selecting from one of four options (via a barely-working touch interface). This task complete, the coaster is built, and is ultimately disappointing.
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