Rollercoaster Tycoon in real life is like a twisted nightmare

9 Dec 2015

For those who would have played Rollercoaster Tycoon back in the day, seeing it replicated in real-life with a bit of video editing will either terrify you, or bring out the sadistic person in you.

Except for the obvious fact that it’s a computer game, the idea of Rollercoaster Tycoon in real life would be pretty extraordinary, given its history of the somewhat bizarre and cruel attitudes people took when playing the game.

For those unfamiliar with it, the game was first launched back in 1999 and gave you total control of a theme park.

Aside from just building your own cool rollercoasters, you had to run it like a proper business, making sure your staff were paid, it was clean and everything was in working order.

The problem was, however, that the majority of players were children who didn’t really care about running a business, but wanted to build rollercoasters and rule over the patrons like a dictator.

Half-finishing rollercoasters with the aim of watching them crash, or picking people up with your tweezers and dropping them into the lake were common activities among players, and it is still going to this day, with one person recently subjecting his digital patrons to a 3,000-day long rollercoaster ride.

This latest video by Andrew M Films, however, takes all that, throws in some special effects, and makes a rather special video that will strike a chord with players from all those years ago, and those of today, for that matter.

Rollercoaster image via Shutterstock

Colm Gorey was a senior journalist with Silicon Republic

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