RollerCoaster Tycoon Creator Chris Sawyer: Community Q&A
We asked the RollerCoaster Tycoon community ‘If you could ask Chris Sawyer anything, what would it be?’. The overwhelming response from the community was sincere gratitude for Chris’s work — RCT enriched childhoods and continues to bring joy to players to this very day.
Below you can read Chris’s answers to some of the questions asked by the community.
“What do you think of the legacy RollerCoaster Tycoon 1 & 2 left behind? Did you ever expect that over 20 years later there would still be a very active community for the games, and how do you feel about it?” — Marcel Vos
It’s astonishing that those games from nearly 25 years ago have grown into such a thriving franchise with a vast community of players and fans. I suppose it’s a bit like having a child who’s grown up now and has a life of their own.
“Do you disable lawn mowing on the cleaners when playing RCT1?”
No of course not — I like my lawns to be neatly mown into stripes!
“I would be interested to know what your favorite rides were when you were making the game and what your current favorite rides are.”
I’d only ridden a handful of rollercoasters when I was working on the first iteration of RollerCoaster Tycoon — my favourites were probably the Wild Mouse at Blackpool Pleasure Beach and Thunder Loop Express at Loudoun Castle, both rides sadly now long gone. Favourites now would be Taron (Phantasialand, Germany), Zadra (Energylandia, Poland), Balder (Liseberg, Sweden), and Ravine Flyer 2 (Waldameer, USA).
“What is your favorite park to play?”
In the original game probably Crumbly Woods, mainly as I had enjoyed creating the wooden coasters in that scenario and the wooded setting just gave a great “feel” to the park. In the add-on packs perhaps Three Monkeys Park — I remember playing that scenario a lot during testing.
“How did you get so much extensive knowledge about roller coasters?”
Long before I was even working on RollerCoaster Tycoon I’d bought every book and video there was about rollercoasters, even though at the time I didn’t like riding them! But I had an enduring fascination with how they looked and the engineering behind them. I did finally get over my dislike of riding them and joined both the Rollercoaster Club of Great Britain and the European Coaster Club, who were both a great resource for research — I bought every back-issue of their club magazines to read from cover to cover! The interest in rollercoasters just continued to grow over time, and especially while working on the games — I’ve now ridden around 770 different rollercoasters around the world.
“Why didn’t you make banked s-bends?”
Interesting question — I never considered having banked S bends at all. Within the structure and limitations of the original game they wouldn’t have made much sense — there wouldn’t have been enough space for smooth transitions along their length and the number of extra track data blocks needed would have meant something else would have had to be compromised to make space.
“The Heartline Twister Coaster has a really interesting form factor that allows for fun design opportunities, but the coaster’s ratings for excitement start out quite low compared to other coasters, and that it seems to be difficult to impossible to turn a Heartline into a high performer. Why is this? Did you have a personal dislike for the Heartline? Or did you just want a coaster with this kind of rating profile in the mix?
Many rollercoaster types I’d never ridden myself before they made it into the game, in fact I’ve still not ridden a Heartline Twister style ride in real life to this day. So the ratings in the game were based on what I’d read from other riders, most of whom weren’t very complimentary about their experiences, hence the poor ratings in the game!
“Was there anything that you would have done differently, and would you go back and tell yourself before launch that nearly 25 years later this game would still be a culturally relevant masterpiece?”
It would have been quite scary to know 25 years ago that RollerCoaster Tycoon would not only have survived this long but had spawned a whole franchise and community — maybe it’s good that I didn’t know! I’m not sure what I would like to have done differently given the chance — an interesting question but I’m not sure there’s anything I’d like to have done differently?
