SimCoaster
Windows - 2001
Description of SimCoaster
Welcome to Theme Park Inc.
I hate roller coasters. When faced with one I miraculously develop a weak stomach and a low-intolerance for any movement. The only time I've ever been close to one is riding the waltzers to sit next to a girl I fancied. When I finally got off the damn ride, I was shaking like a leaf and a pale as a ghost - girls, eh! So could Theme Park Inc. cure me of my fears?
Theme Park Inc. is an attempt to bring a more cohesive storyline to the previous attempt, Theme Park World. Last year's version lacked "...any real aim in building the parks. Whereas in Roller Coaster Tycoon you had to attract so many visitors or earn so much money, here you are left without a specific purpose." If you haven't experienced the game before, it is your job to design and run a theme park, with a view to jumping into the president's seat by buying 50 per cent of the share stock of Theme Park Inc, the company that employs you.
Take a look around
To begin with you have three or four rides laid out on a nice grassy field. It is up to you to develop this land of half-assed rides into something approaching
At first you start with a set of basic rides and facilities at your disposal. A few roller coasters and simpler, more relaxed rides can be installed to entice people to your funfair. Facilities include toilets and money-making stores. As you progress, and scientists develop new technologies, you will be able to create faster, better and more stomach-churning rides. But first you have to hire scientists to work in your research department.
Meet the staff
There are also many other jobs that need to be filled, such as cleaners, guards and gardeners. Like many of the Theme games, it is a simple case of picking from a selection of staff and balancing experience with wage cost. Each worker performs an important task and it is a delicate job balancing wages and necessity. Occasionally a worker will cut up a fuss about not being appreciated and ask for a pay rise. Of course, you can always sack them and get more cost-effective, but less experienced, staff.
Staff members are also useful when it comes to completing challenges that allows you to earn golden tickets - you use these to open up special rides. One of the first challenges you will come across will be working out how to drain a lake to get more land space. You set your scientist to research how to actually perform the task and then you have to train a member of staff in the special ability required; in this case, the gardener must learn about water drainage. As you complete these challenges, new areas are opened and more golden tickets are collected.
In the Queue
As your park becomes more popular you can hike up the prices for the entrance and individual rides. The cash soon starts to flow in and then you have to get with the program and start buying up shares in the company and get the all-important 50 per cent share so you can claim the presidency. This part of the game, which is the crux of this latest Theme Park incarnation, is so deadly boring that I'd rather play without the added story part and just get on with making people merry.
Creating roller coasters which, let's face it, is the best thing about theme park management games is as easy as pie. Just dump down the main building and plot out your track, then adjust the height, camber and curve in your tracks. *Theme Park Inc's *roller coaster designer is easier to use than *Roller Coaster Tycoon's *because you can force the track to work by bending it once it is in place, rather than stick to a set of reasonable physics. However, because of that, riding your own design tends to be less satisfying because it doesn't feel real.
The graphics department hasn't really changed all that much. EA has used the same graphics engine that is used in Theme Park World. A few problems still remain, like the clipping when rides are close together where they seem to pass through each other. The developers, Bullfrog, have spruced up the interface to make it easier to use through a series of icons at the bottom of the screen, which helps over the small side-bar icons that appeared in Theme Park World. A feature that is slightly bemusing is the first-person view that allows you to walk around the park. I used it once, just to try it out, but it's a useless gimmick really. Using it to see what the rides are like is great, but why would you walk around the park all day?
Round and round we go
The sound is suitably jaunty, but completely forgettable. Help provided by the pop-up assistant starts to get a bit annoying as the game goes on. Fortunately, I decided to switch it off before I went completely insane due to it's inane and repetitive jabbering.
*Theme Park Inc *is another stab at the Theme Park game and really provides no major changes. It is fun to play, but not as involving and time grabbing as its long-lived rival Roller Coaster Tycoon. It seems that Bullfrog is reduced to churning out endless and pointless sequels to games that didn't originally make the grade...a sad state for one of the most exciting developers in its hey-day.
Review By GamesDomain
External links
Captures and Snapshots
Comments and reviews
DanTheMan 2025-02-01 0 point
@Anonymus Fox I followed what you did with an XP VM in VirtualBox and while I can bypass the CD with a mounted iso via VirtualCloneDrive and the crack Game.exe, whenever I try to load the game from either Game.exe, SimCoaster on the start menu, or Play on the autorun menu from mounting the disk, It always crashes and gives a generic windows "Game.exe has encountered a problem and needs to close." I got softlocked with windows 10 and have a disk on order but if this is happening now I think its going to keep happening with a disk. Any ideas?
Alex Hobson 2024-11-12 0 point
how do you make challenges easier since I am having a hard time completing them can i edit the challenges.sam file to make them easier
Alex Hobson 2024-11-08 -2 points
how do you get this to work with dgvoodoo2 everytime i start up the game i get black all over the screen and i can’t see the colour also my game crashes a lot as well i have done notepad stuff and no cd but nothing seems to work also i am trying to play the game in 1920×1080
Alex Hobson 2023-11-12 6 points
Hi I'm trying to get theme park inc working on windows 10 with dgvoodoo but the game graphics mess up and I can't see anything anyone know how to get it working
anonymous fox 2023-11-05 -1 point
More specifically the iso rip needs to be mounted in the vm's disk drive, in addition to using the no-cd crack.
anonymous fox 2023-11-05 1 point
ok, So in a windows xp sp2 virtual machine you can load the iso rip (converted from mdf to iso) and that seems to at least overcome the softlock. Still trying to get it natively unlocked in windows 10 using only rips
anonymous fox 2023-11-05 0 point
Ok, so having spent a lot of time trying to revisit my fav childhood game without success, i have only found one solution to overcome the softlock after completing the first area. I have a physical disk drive plugged into my windows 10 pc and ported into a vm instance of windows xp home edition sp2. Installing the game using my cd key and playing it this way is the ONLY way i've found that doesn't result in the softlock when expanding. If anyone has any tips i'd love to hear them. I've tried ripping my disk but even a perfect iso copy loaded into the vm's cd drive triggers a no cd error. and adding the no-cd crack of course triggers the softlock upon expansion. It's painfully slow to load and runs at good fps with software rendering, but I don't wanna have to lug around a cd and a drive to run it in, as well as host a vm, just for one game to work halfway right.
My theory for the no-cd crack is that it was released without testing, so they saw the game ran and would load into the first zone, but failed to notice the softlock that comes 10 minutes in, because they just never played that far.
Dujjo20 2023-09-11 0 point
So it seems everyone can play the game, however we are all stuck with the park expansion not working making the game unplayable after a bit. I hope someone finds a solution someday so I can relive this game in all it's glory
Unlimitits 2023-08-13 0 point
After some troubleshooting I got it better working with these instructions:
1. Download dgVoodoo 2.
2. Extract dgVoodooCpl.exe, as well as D3DImm.dll and DDraw.dll from the MS\x86 subfolder to .
3. Run the game.
If you want to use these instructions you should not use Deafmonk instructions.
Unlimitits 2023-08-11 0 point
I can play the game with Deafmonk instructions but my game sometimes crashes at random, any fix?
macismyname 2023-08-08 0 point
Nevermind, turns out it was working on my HDD but not my SSD. Further, I ran into a glitch where additional zones wouldn't unlock, even after completing the prerequisites.
Macismyname 2023-07-31 0 point
Finally got this running after years of trouble shooting.
Follow Deafmonk21's advice to change the Low Med and High settings, however, I also turned texture filtering to 1 in the "low" folder.
sim man 2023-07-18 0 point
i went into the data folder in the sim coaster file changed high med and low render32 and texture 32 to 1 i even set compatibility to xp service pack 2 for some reason i still get a black screen but with the sound and then nothing it ether soft locks on the screen or crashs and alt + f4 dosnt save me from the softlock im on windows 11 can someone help me?
Danny 2023-04-30 2 points
RIP works on Windows 10 without a crack. Do deafmonk21's Render32 and texture32 fix down below and then set the setupreg.exe and game.exe for compatibility mode XP SP2 and check "run as adminstrator". I restarted my computer and then ran setupreg.exe. Then ran game.exe and game worked perfectly!
Kris 2022-09-05 2 points
Has anyone figured out a fix for the issue with unlocked areas being grayed out? This download has been the only one and only way for me to play this game and I was SO excited until I realized this issu :(
ubiquitous_PhD 2022-05-03 2 points
fear not - it DOES work. I am on Windows 10, compatibility to windowsXP sp2, using the RIP, and a commonly available no CD crack (not sure if this was needed). after following Deafmonk2's fix, you must RESTART your PC before running the .exe as administrator. I kept getting stuck on the menu with the double doors as well. for whatever reason, after restarting, it worked perfectly- animations and all!
The Alchemist 2022-04-25 0 point
It tells me I need a serial number to play but the iso doesn't list a serial number to use anywhere
Sneaky 2022-01-11 0 point
Doesn't work. Waste of time. deafmonk2's fix only gets you to the main menu but game doesn't advance after that.
SomeGuyy 2021-12-25 0 point
The Game Doesnt work... the installer runs, and works on compatibility mode in windows xp service 2. It will install the game on the computer. If you select play it just closes. tried changing those 3 files, did nothing to fix the issue.
Anoos 2021-04-11 -5 points
Easy fix for the previous issue. Needed to run the game as Administrator on XP Service Pack 2
Anoos 2021-04-10 0 point
Game loads fine with deafmonk's fix, but won't progress past the main menu or play any cutscenes. The game comes pre-loaded with a fresh save file, but even that one isn't able to load a park. What am I supposed to do here?
Lizzy 2020-06-21 0 point
I mean when I try to add it to the box it says the file is a Windows executable and DOS Box cannot run it.
Lizzy 2020-06-21 1 point
I changed the things in the file but when I load up the game, it crashes at the main menu. What should I do?
yesman 2020-05-11 3 points
update: when I unlock new areas, I can't build in them. They are open and unlocked but I can't build. They appear as grayed/shaded out. Any help appreciated
yesman 2020-05-11 0 point
been looking for this game for years and its finally here. so hyped
thank you deafmonk21 for the steps to get it to work.
rollercoasterlover 2019-12-21 -1 point
i had this game too but im lazey so go to sim theme parks comments an see why hint my dad
rollercoasterlover 2019-12-20 0 point
i want this game because i had it but my dad put it in a storage unit and he did not pay it of so my computer and all my games went by by along with some other crap of mine
Salem 2019-10-17 0 point
I also have the issue of not being able to build in the areas I've unlocked. Other than that I'm really happy I had the opportunity to play this game again.
CGpie 2019-06-23 -1 point
i followed the steps and the game works great. Except when i open a new area, it doesnt allow me to build on it. Any ideas?
Mildly annoyed 2019-01-03 2 points
This is an Alcohol clone of the FLT scene release renamed. FLT-SIMC.BIN 490,686,000 bytes EE95DA05. Open the rar file and you see the same checksum for the MDF and the crack is in the image (CRACK folder, plebs). It would be nice to see legit isos on abandonware sites and not this old scene crap that everyone has. Waste of time and bandwidth.
Marz 2018-10-19 11 points
Here's a thing... Game works really well for me, but once i get the first park expansion, I get the cutscene and all, but I still can't build in that area. Keep going to get the next one unlocked, and those areas are still greyed out to me. Any idea how to fix something like /that/?
Herz 2018-10-06 0 point
DEAFMONK21 I did what you said, the game started but then it crashed ... do you know what made this happen and maybe a possible fix ?:
Blake 2018-09-14 2 points
Nevermind, but I still can't get the game to work. When I click on it, it acts like its going to start, but doesn't.
rosmc87 2018-09-08 -2 points
deafmonk21's easy fix of editing the 3 files in the data folder got it running perfectly on my windows 10 machine! Originally I got the first few sound files and a black screen on load up before crashing. soon as I got the files edited it loaded up and runs perfectly. thank you kindly.
deafmonk21 2018-07-24 1 point
Theres another site that has pc games iso to download and to mount it on your ghost cd rom, it also have a crack folder with the game.exe that lets you run the game without the cd needed by erasing the orignal game.exe and replace it with that crack game.exe to run without cd. Have to use poweriso to mount to the ghost drive.
I like to use both this and the isozone website. found most of my favorite game from long time ago for windows 98 and xp.
deafmonk21 2018-07-24 6 points
In order to get the simcoaster to work on new computer like 7,8,8.1(I have 8.1) and newer version of windows, you have to go to the bullfrog folder in the program file and look for data folder, then look for the 3 of the file says low med and high. edit using the notepad, change the 2 settings (Render32 and texture 32) from 0 to 1. The game should start with no problem.(Ive done it last week and still playing it faster and almost done with all the objectives than the simcoaster on my old windows 98 laptop.
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