Theme Park by Zach Meston

If, like moi, you partake of the occasional computer game, you're almost guaranteed to have played something created by the British lads at Bullfrog Productions Ltd. These guys burst onto the scene with a quirky little "god game" called Populous in 1989--quirky enough to sell a mind-blowing three million copies in various computer and video game formats. Bullfrog followed up Populous with a string of hits (PowerMonger, Populous II, Syndicate) and an action game that flopped big-time (Flood). Now they've taken their latest raging success, Theme Park, and converted it quite nicely to the 3DO.

The first game in Bullfrog's new "Designer Series" of simulations, Theme Park makes you a Walt Disney wannabe with the goal of building the most profitable and popular park on planet Earth. You start out by choosing a location for your theme park on a map of the world. If you want to build your park near a big city, you'll draw huge crowds, but you'll pay through the nose to buy land; if you build the park in the middle of nowhere, the land is dirt-cheap, but you'll have to spend big bucks to make your park interesting enough to attract the ever-fickle public.

With your location chosen, the construction begins. You single-handedly build the park and place all the structures: walkways for the park visitors, snack stands, sideshow attractions, bathrooms, trees, and, of course, the rides themselves. Some rides are self-contained units of joy, which you simply drop into your park and watch as they draw in the crowds. Other, user-definable rides--roller coasters, monorails, race cars--allow you to construct the ride paths yourself. (There's nothing quite as satisfying in Theme Park as building a bitchin' coaster with a multitude of corkscrews and loops.)

Theme Park gives you a painful amount of control over the park's rides and shops. With the park rides, for example, you can alter the cost, the length (a faster ride means more people can experience it, but they get less enjoyment out of it), and the capacity (try to squeeze in too many people and you risk a disaster). With the park shops, you can alter the contents of the food (more caffeine in the coffee, more ice in the drinks, more salt on the fries) or tweak the chances of winning a prize in a sideshow.

Naturally, things are going to go very wrong during your first few plays, and this is when Theme Park gets REALLY fun. Put the food court too close to the rides and watch your patrons barf their guts out; fail to hire enough security guards and watch your park become a playground for Hell's Angels; fire the mechanics and watch your rides burst into flames and explode (which would be a very cool ride, but I digress).

To truly "win" the game, your theme park must be superior to as many as 40 (!) rival parks in six categories: Richest Park Owner (achieved with effective park management and wise investments), Most Exciting Park (achieved with a healthy selection of rides), Most Amenities (achieved by building plenty of food stalls and sideshows), Customer Satisfaction (achieved by kissing the customers' butts), Biggest Park (duh), and Most Pleasant Park (achieved with a combo of aesthetic design and planting plenty of trees).

There are three difficulty levels in Theme Park. "Sandbox" is the simplest--and, in my not-so-humble opinion, the most enjoyable--of the three; all you do at this level is design your park and make sure you don't spend too much money at once. (You can always take out a loan if you're perilously close to bankruptcy.)

The "Sim" difficulty level introduces the player to the joys of Research and Negotiation. The Research Screen lets you invest money in six different fields: Upgrade Ride (improve rides already in the park), New Ride Design (invent new rides), New Shop Design (invent new shops to empty your patrons' pockets), Staff Training (improve customer service), New Features (better beautification for the park), and Upgrade Facilities (bigger warehouses to store more supplies and bigger buses to haul in more visitors).

The Negotiation Screen lets you settle monetary disputes with your greedy park staff, and negotiate with suppliers to buy stuff more cheaply. The more staff and shops you have, the more frequently you have to negotiate. Make a deal and life goes on, but fail to settle a dispute and your workers go on strike and picket the park, driving customers away in droves.

The "Full" difficulty level introduces the Stock Screen and Stock Market. The Stock Screen is where you purchase supplies for your shops. It takes a while for supplies to be delivered, so you need to make sure you always have stock on the way, lest ye be caught without food to stuff the customers' faces. You also have to be careful not to order too many supplies, because any stock that can't fit into your warehouse is, to quote the Theme Park manual, "left to rot."

The Stock Market is where you buy and sell shares of stock in theme parks, including your own. If too many shares of your park are bought, your profits dwindle to nothing, so it's crucial to invest in your own park's stock as well as others.

Theme Park's well-designed interface uses every button on the 3DO controller. Most menus are accessed with the Left Shift button, and the menu icons chosen with the A or B buttons. (The A button usually brings up a detailed menu, while the B button brings up a quick-selection menu.) There's also a built-in tutorial mode that walks you through the controls while you build a teeny-tiny theme park.

The graphics in Theme Park are excellent, from the 3D-rendered intro sequence to the angled-overhead-view visuals in the game itself. The tastiest piece of eye candy is the "Interactive Movie" feature (exclusively found in the 3DO version); this lets you "experience" each ride by watching a 3D-rendered animation from the rider's perspective. The sound effects and music are good, but not great.

The verdict: Theme Park is quite a fun game, but there's definitely a learning curve involved--this ain't a game you can jump into right away. After a few hours, though, you'll be building parks like a pro and loving every minute of it. If you're a fan of strategy games or SimCity-type games, give Theme Park a look-see.

Theme Park Electronic Arts

