Throwback Thursday | Theme Park World.

Theme park world (also known as Sim Theme Park) was a huge game back when it was released, I was one of the many people who played it back in 1999 which was developed by Bullfrog Productions and released by Electronic Arts, my parents were chilled out with the fact it was a safe game to play and that it was creative. Theme Park World is actually the sequel to Theme Park which was released in 1994. We originally had the Theme park games for PC but eventually got them for PS1 and PS2, my family have always been into Playstations so it was awesome that Theme park world was available for it. The thing I loved most about the game was how detailed it was, being able to make my own rides and watch my theme park grow which brought me more enjoyment than you would actually think it would.

So what exactly do you have to do in Theme Park World? You build up your theme park with different rides, stalls and even different events happening inside of your world. You can customise each of these things from the colour, length and even how many people can go on the rides at once. Once you've finished your construction on the roller coasters you're able to ride them and get a first person view. As the player, you will buy platinum tickets to purchase rides, attractions, shops and features which are on the games main website. There is an aim to the game, there are four different worlds you can unlock and each world you unlock is a harder level, I was rubbish at the harder levels but that doesn't mean I didn't get enjoyment out of them. You start off with 1 key in the game and get to choose between the two levels Halloween World and Lost Kingdom, I always chose Lost Kingdom first. In order to obtain more keys, you must try and get golden tickets and once you have managed to get 3 golden tickets you will get an extra key, and once you have enough you can unlock the other worlds, the other two worlds are Wonderland and Space Zone.

You're given challenges by The Advisor within the game, they will set you a challenge to do something within a certain time frame, if you do it within that time frame you will win a large amount of money for your park. I was ok with the challenges, they were simple enough to do, such as selling a certain amount of food or tickets within a certain amount of days. What you have to remember is the game isn't in real time so the days fly by pretty quickly so it's fun to have these challenges to do. You're also able to publish pictures of your park online and visit other people's parks, I never use to do this, I was mostly concerned with not ruining my own park! Fun fact about the game is that most of the staff you can hire in the game are named after the people who worked on Theme Park World.

The last Theme Park game to come out was called Theme Park Inc which was released in 2001, it was the last game to have the Bullfrog logo before it merged with EA UK in 2004. Since playing the Theme Park games I don't think any other game can compete with it, it has its own quirks and I like it a lot better than other roller coaster games such as Roller Coaster Tycoon World, I guess it's the graphics, who would ever choose a basic looking game over one where the graphics are a lot more better and developed? ME! I also find the Theme Park games a lot easier to use and more entertaining.  I use to play Theme hospital too, it came out before Theme Park World in 1997 so I played it a lot more than I would like to admit! Did you ever play Theme Park? Do you still play it?

Elle May