Get the latest tech news

Rollercoaster Tycoon (Or, MicroProse's Last Hurrah)

I think it touches on two of the most fundamental aspects of human nature. We all like doing something constructive, where we can see that we are creating something from virtually nothing, and we all have a desire to nurture or look after things.

When the game was just about finished, he gave it to his agent Jacqui Lyons, another survivor of the old days who had done much to create the legend of the British bedroom boffin back in 1984, when she had represented a pair of wunderkinds named David Braben and Ian Bell, organizing a widely covered publishers’ auction for their landmark creation Elite. For in staking a claim right between the two opposing camps, it allowed Rollercoaster Tycoon to trickle up and down to reach both of them; the hardcore couldn’t dismiss it out of hand as lowest-common-denominator junk like the much-ridiculed Wal Mart staple Deer Hunter, even as casual players still saw a price they were just about willing to pay. Positively reeking of tourism as it did — Alan Hassenfeld entrusted the day-to-day supervision of his software division to his COO Herb Baum, most recently of that well-known purveyor of digital technology and entertainment Quaker State Oil — Hasbro struggled mightily to convince credible developers to come to its shiny new complex.

Get the Android app