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Thrillville: Off The Rails

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Does anybody remember this game? Especially now since that games like RC World and Planet Coaster exist, it's weird that people up and forgot about this game and it's sequel.

Now the thread is named after the sequel, but only because I played that one so much and it's the only one to have a PC port to Windows. Also I have a surprise for everybody who hasn't gone to wikipedia and looked at the developer. Because the developer for the Thrillville series is the same as the ones who made Planet Coaster. In fact, they actually developed RC2 expansions as well as RC3. I'm guessing that their deal with whoever owned the rights to RCT went south so they wanted to make their own Roller Coaster Tycoon game.

 

But here's where the game differs from most Roller Coaster Tycoon games... the game isn't in a top down perspective, but in a 3rd person perspective where you control a player character. The main gimmick in Thrillville is that you can take care of the park like you normally would, but you can also participate as a guest and do small stuff or talk to people. However the game does have a big flaw, there's no sandbox mode and the editing is structured where you work in specific places and you can't build more coasters. You have no control over any aesthetics or geometry of the park, but you are allowed to edit the tracks, and you can place small attractions wherever you want.

 

Now, the sequel did add the "Woah!" parts, which are sections where the tracks does something that in real life would kill almost everyone who rides it. They raise thrill immensely and are easy to add, but they have high nausea factors. They're obviously there to make track editing easier and make coaster making more challenging. But the real change that I liked as a kid was the ability to finally be able to not finish coasters. Now you can just let the cars fly off the tracks!

 

But yeah, if you remember or have played this, share your thoughts...

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Oh, I think I actually still have my copy for the PS2! If I can find it, or at least find the case, I'll update you on it. Barely remember ever playing it, though.

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Oh yeah! That game!

 

Funny story: I actually owned these for the PSP instead of the console versions, but one of the things that immediately stuck out in my mind was the plot where Uncle Mortimer, who was this weird caricature of Doc Brown from Back to the Future, had hired you on to build this amazing theme park in the name of one-upping Globo-Joy, the competition, and it slowly devolves into corporate espionage to the point where you must destroy Globo-Joy from the inside out...BY BUILDING BIGGER, BETTER, AND MORE DANGEROUS THEME PARKS!

 

Screw brain cells, the more you ride, the more you build, the more we force them into bankruptcy! We got a treasure land park to make from your sorrow and pain, Mr. 'Vernon Garrison'"! Except the actual mini games over the rollercoasters were...a lot more fun. Despite the fact that the rollercoasters in both games had a first-person mode, IIRC...

 

And then you built, like, 5 parks, including a time machine themed one called...Thrillwarp? It's been awhile, and I'm going off the top of my head. Which was kind of a cool inside joke given Mortimer's look and voice, who was voice by Brian Greene. Don't know if it's the scientist Brian Greene, but it'd be cool if it was.

 

But then they just got rid of it in Off the Rails. Period. Which I get: nobody really went to RCT or Planet Coaster for stories, but at least Thrillville made up for the lacking coaster editor with a really weird story. Now it's just that you can take off tracks and kill people! ...Or you could, if they all didn't just have parachutes. The pansies.

 

But yeah, I sunk so many hours into the original on my PSP. Unfortunately, I don't have my PSP near me, but I will tell you it was a great portable experience, and I can only imagine how much better it would be on console. And now its sequel is also on Steam, so bonus for PC players.

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