Transport Tycoon - MicroProse, RRP œ44.99
         (Simulation for PC on floppy disk or CD-ROM)

               CD version reviewed by Alan

So here I am yet again. Blinking at my annual glimpse of the
limelight. Cajoled into writing a review. And didn't I do well
this year? The boss allocated me something I could really relate
to. Boys' toys. I got to play with trains, and trucks, and buses,
and boats, and planes. And I got to play with her grown-up
computer too, you know, the 486 with the CD-ROM and the sound and
all that.

I'd seen Sue playing Transport Tycoon and hadn't taken much
notice. Just another simulation game along the lines of Railroad
Tycoon, Sim Everything and all that - looked a bit much like hard
work to me.

It took me a while to get into it but I'm well and truly hooked.
Transport Tycoon has a pretty simple concept; build a transport
network and make a load of dough. At first sight, the screen
looks a bit complex but Microprose include four really useful
rolling demos which show you how its all done. They also give you
three tutorials in the slim, but useful, manual.

When the game loads it develops a new scenario, a high quality,
detailed 3D map with a number of towns, coal mines, factories and
stuff. Your task is to develop the transport infrastructure to
move passengers, mail, materials and finished goods to where they
are needed. Every now and then you are offered a lucrative
subsidy to move something to somewhere and the trick is to set
up the route before one of your cut-throat competitors does.

Say fr'instance there's a subsidy on offer to take passengers
from Little Honnington to Frafinghill City. You first find the
towns on the map, then build a road, rail, air or sea route from
one to the other. The biggest early challenge is trying to
understand the 3D representation of the land. You can't build
routes up or down a slope unless you meet it head on. This means
you often have to raise or lower bits of land or, alternatively,
build bridges or tunnels. After a while it becomes clear and it
gets a lot easier.

After you've built the road, or whatever, you need to put in the
vehicles. If it's a road you need a bus. You first have to place
a road depot where the bus will be built and maintained. You then
have to place a bus station at each end of the route. Then you
click on the depot to instruct the new bus on its route, and kick
it into life. When it delivers the first batch of customers to
its destination you get paid, and you get the subsidy for three
years - if you beat the opposition.

The game starts in 1930 and runs for up to 100 years. You start
with 1930s vehicles but any vehicle you buy has a finite life,
in the case of buses 12 years, so you must replace them when they
get too old. So you start off with steam trains and Dakotas and
end up with Concords, hovercraft and monorails (apparently).

There's a lot more to it than I can explain here. It is after all
a strategy game and your main objective is to beat the
competitors. In the higher difficulty level they get quite
intelligent and even survival is a challenge. It's a jungle out
there. Sue particularly likes the fact that you can personalise
the game by renaming the towns - she's busily building a vast
infrastructure between the metropolises(?) of Sidcup, Bromley,
Orpington, and other local hot spots.

The version we're playing is on CD-ROM but I've hardly ever seen
it access the disk, so I suspect that the disk version will play
OK as long as you have enough memory (Sue's machine has 8 megs).

I got into a spot of trouble at one stage when I built a long
rail tunnel under the water and it all got terribly expensive and
took a long time, and when I finished nobody used it. So it's
just like real life then.

And there's hours of fun. It takes about 20 minutes of game play
for a year to pass and you play for 100 years. That's over 30
hours, then there's 3 difficulty levels, and an infinite number
of scenarios. So that's ... that's ... well, that's ages.

It's just as well I'm not addicted to it. OK so we stayed up late
last night playing it, and I started early this morning, but I
had to do my research to get this review done, didn't I? By the
way, I wouldn't recommend Transport Tycoon if you don't like to
get completely engrossed and spend hours on pointless pursuits.
So I can't recommend it to SynTax readers, can I? Ah well, I
suppose I'd better keep testing it to see if it has any bugs ...

Happy New Year!









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