A look at the early development of RollerCoaster Tycoon 

Apparently I forgot that peacocks exist when making this video. At first I wrote "swan-like", but later changed it to "duck-like", but neither felt entirely correct. This feeling was correct as it is, as many of you have pointed out, a peacock.

The "rusty track" feature sounds basically like the effect in the final game where ride value goes down over time. I would have preferred to actually gave the visual indicator for this, instead of the player having to just know in the final game.

9:20 I have learned that, if I'm wearing sunglasses, I should never sit on a bench.

Chris Sawyer was like "if I can program this entire game in assembly, by myself, then these lazy handymen can skip their damn lunch!"

I really want Marcel to interview Chris, I think that would be so freaking cool. You could talk for hours and I'd watch every second.

I would guess that rusty tracks also affected ride performance and create more potential crash scenarios.

They didn't include the rust sprites, but I think the rust mechanic did make it into the final game. People will only pay half as much for a ride after it reaches a certain age, and you have to refurbish it to get them to pay the full price. I'm guessing they were originally planning to make the old rides appear rusty, which was scrapped because that's so many sprites, but they left the mechanic for old rides in.

Seeing the golden butts as part of the awards, it would have been nice if your park could win an award for being "the park with the most places to sit." I think you would get it by having large guest capacities in your park's rides.

On the panda model - maybe an alternate steeplechase car? Best idea I can come up with, as it definitely seems to be built to have some sort of rail run between its legs

I would love for the OpenRCT guys to add a couple of these things in the game, like some added scenery and paths, the robot entertainer, and the linear slide

Maybe that trophy was for the best toilets?

I’m guessing one of the reasons out-of-the-park vehicles were removed was due to the sprite limit. If you were close to it, having a bunch of cars spawning every now and then could prevent building at random points. Plus the bus spawning guests when you’re at the guest limit might have caused issues too.

9:02 The long slide ride eventually made it into the RCT3: Soaked! Expansion

The peep combusting at 9:28 😭😭

Interestingly, a lot of these ideas eventually made it into Parkitect. Staff taking breaks, cars driving outside parks, groups of guests arriving by bus, the robot entertainer ... I wonder if Sebioff also read this blog or if great minds simply think alike.

I know way too much about this game and have never played it. I have been watching your channel for about three years now, and you helped me get through a rough time during the pandemic since your voice is really calming to me for some reason. Whenever I needed it, I would use your videos as both a distraction and a means of learning more about some of my favorite things-- Video games. Keep up the wonderful and informative videos, Marcel, and thank you so much.

The early pyramid seems to explain why you can place stuff inside of them in the final game

10:58 The dome structure in the top left is actually an early version of the Info Kiosk, Buggy has made a recreation of it for RCT2.

I wonder what Chris would've thought of the fact that this game he was working on would become a huge part of the childhood of millions of people.

Regarding Duck migration. If I am remembering correctly, You will also see the ducks actually migrating. They will fly in a V formation out of the map.

5:23 oh my god it's him

The exploded track piece would have been a nice hint for how to get guests to ride a ride again, and mark where the problem spot of the coaster is for a player.

The ride on pandas (and other animals) are very popular at Asian parks, especially in Japan. The small park in Tokyo called Hanayashiki has merchandise featuring these rides and really talks them up. It's a very common thing over there. Not sure if that's where the ideas came from or not, but they do have a precedent in real life! I included one of these in my Washuzan Park RCT project.

12:00 that looping coaster on the right not getting up the curved hill 😂😂😂

those "duck like" bushes are peacocks yo aaaaand 9:28 a guest just up and explodes...

The panda sort of reminds me of those motorized animal scooters you often see in shopping malls and amusement parks. Just way too big.

Early versions of games are often interesting. As are early watchers of Marcel Vos vids

The rusty track is interesting--I could actually see the chipping paint stuff only appearing as a visual indicator that a ride has gotten old and is no longer as profitable. If I recall there's not really any indication of when that happens in the game now so that could've been an intention.

A lot of the early ideas are quite interesting to think about from a park management standpoint, particularly more interesting ride maintenance and management options. It would be nice if some rides did visibly show their age, maybe less extremely than with actual rusted track.

I remember seeing a different style of Space Rings when messing with glitchy operating modes. I wonder if there are any more prototype sprites stored in the game.

5:30 "It is based on a train called the Northern Rock..." Nah, fam, that's Thomas.

That explains why some of the boxart shows broken track in the background.

Having cars and busses use the roads would had been really cool! Imagine if it was a requirement to have a road leading up to the entrance, so the bus could provide with a bunch of guests at once~ kinda like how they did in Theme Park World!

Transport tycoon 2 was later launched, and its actually fantastic. But due to cris losing the brand name ot was renamed to locomotion prior to launch. Its one of those perls of a game that is really the best for over a decade, but a lot of People looked at it as if it was a second tear game due the grapics being somewhat outdated at the time

11:50 I mean hey, I'll take the best toilets award over the buttocks award any day.

Somewhere on RU-vid there are videos by one of the designers that show how they rendered coaster trains for each possible frame of animation. Just an awesome game and very cool to see the development!

Those staff eating lunch reminded me of the staff in Themepark from 1994

For the golden butts maybe an award for having many benches? "Most comfortable butts", my first though was an early most toilets, second was best ass in the country

I wonder if OpenRCT2 could bring back that wood pinned interface, that looks pretty cool.

I disagree about the buttons being pinned to wood. It's a similar-looking interface to a lot of point-and-click games of the time (especially edutainment games for young children), so it would've eventually made the game feel dated rather than classic.

lol i noticed at 9:27 a guest randomly exploding

i wonder is the most dazzling color scheme award is a holdover from the rusty track concept

Someday you should make a RCT iceberg video!

Id love to create an overlay for orct2 that allows multiple parks to be connected to each other as a multipark manaager thing, use the wooden graphic look, allow monthly goals and things, and allow competitor ai’s to exist that you’re trying to beat.

9:27 No ones gonna talk about the guest that sits down and just fucking explodes?

As a game developer myself I'm always grateful for videos that show and explain how long it takes to make games and how much effort goes into the process. Players of the games never see this side of things, and expect so much. So letting people know that it's very difficult and time consuming makes me very grateful! Great video!

I think it's for the better they didn't add the cars to the game. the car looks very 90's which would have resulted in the game aging like crazy - pretty much how the expansions of RCT2 turned out to be, in which Chris Sawyer didn't have a part. same goes for the wooden lay-out theme... it looks fun and cool but way too outdated. the current one is more or less timeless. great vid nevertheless! was a true eye opener to me :)

I often wonder if there will come a time when Marcel Vos runs out of ideas for rct videos, yet so far he keeps on pulling them out the bag, awesome video!

@6:48 I absolutely LOVE that the safety bar restraints on the panda-coaster looks like the panda bear is just the panda wrapping his arms around the guests. Everyone gets to sit in a panda bears lap just in case they get a little scared, I could really go for that 😂

Hang on, why at 09:28 does a guest explode? 😆

I'm kind of dissapointed that by "exploding track" Chris didn't literally mean track that would intentionally cause trains to explode

I would love staff taking breaks. Just adds that little bit more realism.

9:23 Someone left a landmine on the bench

I see a Marcel Vos video and instantly like it.

I almost forgot about all these dev stuff. It's always refreshing to see some old game development progress. I'm sure there're some in the community that'll revive some of these into OpenRCT to get a feel of how these could've possibly worked. Thanks for reminding me that these existed :)

Hi Marcel I'm very glad you dug such deep and made an informal yet still matches your iconic entertaining style documentary video. very good job dude. this makes me consider if you have any plan of making an episode to describe the differences between RCT1 RCT2 RCT classic and OpenRCT, I have to admit although I consider myself a long-term anticipated RCT gamer, I am also usually got confused by all those different RCT1 RCT2 RCT classic versions. do you have any plans on this topic? thank you.

I loved this video. It is different than what you normally do but very interesting. More of this please.

One of the most interesting RCT-related videos I've seen. Great work! Love it.

lol i wonder if the butt award had to do with the Best Bathrooms award

11:22 DIS BUS You're the best Marcel.

The "rusty track" could have helped judging the aging and degrading of rides. Letting you know when it was time to start adjusting prices as the ride aged.

Love this, I always like to peek behind the curtain of a finished Product, and see it's development.

The multilane slide did come back in RollerCoaster Tycoon 3: Soaked! and it was functionally identical to the concept you showed. Perhaps Frontier had access to these dev screenshots?

MARCEL, I LOVE YOU! You always make me wanna play RCT2 after i'm done watching one of your vids! I genuinely never thought that we would get to see some REAL RCT beta, let alone THIS MUCH. Stay awesome!

Considering the time frame, it's weird to know I was still developing into a full person and not born yet meanwhile sawyer was making this great game.

I still wonder if the 3D models used to render the ingame sprites are still hanging around anywhere. I'd love to see the peep model in full scale 3D

I like to believe the golden butts were a prototype for the "Park with the best toilets" award.

4:40 I believe those are supposed to be peacocks, not ducks

I think OpenRCT2 could add the rusty tracks as a way of indicating a ride aging and lowering the admission price. Paying for the track to be repainted resembles OpenRCT2's refurbishing feature, and makes it more visibly obvious why a guest wouldn't want to pay as much for it anymore.

In one of the beta screenshots, one of the wooden coasters is possibly a recreation of a cedar point wooden rollercoaster called Cyclone. It ran from 1929 to 1951.

Id love to see a showcase of your parks at somepoint; especially the scenery. Some of that looks amazing!

This was immensely fascinating and makes my life feel so much more complete. Thank you for making this information more available and known.

This was really fascinating stuff, thanks Marcel!

4:40 Actually those are peacocks. These birds are known/notorious for their wheel-like feather tails which to us humans are pretty, but naturally serve dual purposes: To impress female peacocks which do not have these wheel-shaped tails and to scare other animals.

I don't know why I love listening to this guy talking about a game I never played and didn't know existed before i discovered this channel, but you made it sir!

12:00 my theory is the butt trophies could have been tied to guests riding an attractions for too long of a duration OR maybe a trophy tied to having a suitable number of benches in a park (reflecting how few tired guests are in a park).

9:28 Guest 495 has spontaneously combusted

one of my all-time favorites on this channel, what a joy to see development progress. I can guess that the exploded track pieces were confusing in testing -- maybe players thought the whole ride needed to be scrapped instead of deleting and replacing the track pieces? but who knows really! so much fun to speculate.

This is a blast from the past! I remember fawning over these pictures in the early 2000s, and wondering why so many of the ideas didn't make it into the final game!

11:38 if I recall, there IS lines of text with some of the park marketing campaign options that mentions “bus loads of people” or I might be thinking of a line in the scenario editor.

I love a sneaky peek behind the scenes of things...Great video. Thanks Marcel

At 6:31 the panda looks like those motorized pandas that kids can ride around on at the mall. I'm not sure if they have those overseas, but here in America, you can pretty much find them at every mall you visit. I'm assuming that guests at your park would be able to use them and ride around to get from place to place in your park.

The rusty track could be a very neat way to visually signal how old a ride is, and how badly it needs refurbishment so that you can ask more money again.

Duuuude those little tank cars for the car ride would have been so cool. And the Handyman sitting down eating lunch is cute af

I'm glad they added the multi-lane slide to RCT3. It's called the Giant SLide, and it has MASSIVE throughput. It can accommodate a huge number of guests in a short time. RCT3 also still has the spiral slide too. Would be cool to have the Giant Slide in RCT2 though......Maybe they'll add it in OpenRCT2 in a future "Developmental Rides" update or something.

The Bus reminds me of an older amusement park game that I played from Floppy disks. I think it was "Theme Park" but I'm not 100% sure, might just be bad memory.

i've never really noticed that about spirals/vertical loops, but it makes sense… a similar principle is used in designing (horizontal!) curves on highways-depending on the governing authority, such curves will consist of two sections. the inner arc is a curve with a fixed radius (primarily governed by the design speed of the road), typically with some superelevation of the outer edge, and the parts of the curve connecting to the straights are "spirals", i.e. curves whose radius varies along their length.

neat video, really cool to think about what could have been. The rusty and exploding track could have absolutely been neat ideas as long as coasters didn't degrade too fast, the 'sign nailed to a board' ui does look charming but at this point I'm so used to the ui we got that at this point I can't imagine having anything else.

Really good video, as always. It was pretty interesting, since I've been watching your videos for years now but I've never actually played RC. _However_, I've been playing quite a lot of Transport Tycoon in recent times!

"You have received an award for 'The Nicest Butt in the Country'!"

Thank you for preserving this. It's just a shame that nobody's park will ever win the Best Butts award.

At its core, RCT is Transport Tycoon Deluxe except the cargo usually ends up and the same place it started. The construction was been advanced to allow very free 3D building. And none of the vehicles move freely on the map but the cargo does. If you go to the much later official Transport Tycoon for iPad game you'll find that the construction works much more like RCT. Tracks have smooth corners instead of angles and you can build stations in the air and underground like RCT. Digging through hills is also like RCT instead of the fixed tunnels of TTD.

The pandas look like the animal vehicles you can ride around in at some parks in Japan. They sit on the ground in large open plazas and you climb on and ride them as they “walk” about and you steer them.

5:35 Trivia: The Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway was the basis for the Arlesdale Railway in Thomas the Tank Engine

From your previous video (on splash boats), I recalled that I wish there was a water park expansion that allowed for designing a portion, or paths, within your park as being related to a water park (lazy river, numerous slides with different vehicle/excitement types, unique water rides, etc.). This also implies the need for different facilities (changing rooms, lockers, first aid) as well as different rides with different stats specific to water parks. It also implies a different type of guest, be it what ticket price they paid up front (full park or without the water park aspect) or that you can (or should) only go on water park rides if you are a water-park type visitor (wearing the appropriate attire). Relative to this video, I was reminded of an aspect of visiting a park that could be easily ignored, but can affect a guest's first/last impression of a park: how easy is it to get into/out of the park if you aren't simply walking to it. Relative to a real world experience, the stress related to getting into a park should affect their overall happiness. Is there sufficient parking? Is there an easy way to get from the parking lot to the actual park (buses/trams)? I know these are very minor elements compared to the intent of building exciting theme parks, but I'd have to say regardless of how exciting a theme park might be, if I can't get into it easily, or cost-effectively, I'm not likely to go. It's a very boring aspect of park management that could provide a different gameplay element. Regardless of the second paragraph, I still do wish for the ability to build lazy rivers, water slides, water play areas, etc. A different, complicated, aspect is if the game could support associating groups of people. A family goes to a park and a parent is the only one not enjoying themselves. How long before the entire family leaves because one person is unhappy? A bus load of people show up at a specific time period of a year, spend a specific amount of time at the park, and then leave. Did enough of them enjoy themselves? Will they come back next year?

6 days 42k 3k 373rd.... yay dude, haven't seen this channel since like a month or 1.5 ago. It was kinda cool.

On Chris Sawyer's website, one of the FAQs takes you to a page showcasing HD models of some of the rides, like the Haunted House. Apparently, many of them were full 3D models before being downscaled.

12:00 Feels like a diferent model for the best toilet award to me. I imagine the toilet was more child friendly

This was cool!! Thanks for sharing!

Incremental awards (passenger bus) would've been very nice, tho it would make some scenarios bit harder. That alternative user interface is lovely! In-spite of hating the touch screen friendly interface of classic and that atrocity in 3rd tycoon i am not condemning alternatives (even tho i still consider RCT 1's interface the best of the 2 proper coaster tycoons) and that certainly is one that would've been welcome as customization option. Panda thing looks like it would've been on either the railed bicycle ride or maybe along with horse and dirt bike on single rail coaster, it is not huge loss tho i would prefer to have more vehicle variants.