Ranking Every Roller Coaster Game 

There needs to be a more subjective category. Like level of fun. RCT World being that high compared to RCT 3 is a crime

Putting rct world in the same category as rct3 seems a little off. Rct3 introduced many to the franchise and is personally my favorite rct game

It’s absolutely outrageous that planet coaster is 2 tiers lower than a ROBLOX theme park builder

RCT2 absolutely deserves to be ranked higher than RCT1. The price may be higher, but it doesn’t lose any of the things that make RCT1 great while also improving on many things (such as tweaks and added features in the ride construction and path/landscape tools, as well as the ability to easily elevate or stack scenery and rides). It also adds the ride designer and scenario creator features, which adds incredible value to the overall game and makes it easily worth the slight uptick in price. That aside, this seems to be a great comparison list. The only game I had never heard of before was parkitect, and now I totally want to check it out!

ThrillVille truly is a forgotten franchise and while not on the level of some of the RCT games, they were still fun games with their own unique content.

Planet coaster deserves to be higher to be honest. It's the only game on this list that balances simplicity like parkitect and also being super advanced. The realism is amazing especially with reshade where the game looks just like real life plus frontier haven't abandoned it. They moved on to planet zoo which is another perfect game in my opinion.

One thing you missed about TPT2 and Planet Coaster is they both have an automated smoothing feature. I think its just the way you build your coasters because some creations on Planet Coaster do not have those “bad transitions” as you say.

I find it interesting that you mention the freedom of being able to theme things in Planet Coster when the majority of flat rides are pre built/themed. Planet Coater is undoubtedly a phenomenal game, but it always bugged me that they spent so much time giving people the freedom to create with the scenery items, but the rides already had a theme. Just my thoughts!

Someone who finally appreciates Theme Park Tycoon 2! I've played since 2016 since I was 7 and have loved it. The amount of replayability and simplicity makes it so easy to pick up! This game introduced me to the tycoon/coaster builder genre, and I still play it to this day. Especially since the building capabilities are incredible.

no way youve ranked a roblox game higher then planet coaster

As a coaster enthusiast, I think Theme park Tycoon 2’s coaster editor system is great. I also love the customizable sizes colour a and textures for the primitive shapes, it allows you to be very creative, and make extremely realistic rides. It’s my personal favorite

I still play RCT3 to this day. The introduction of custom scenery makes it number one for me

There are some beautiful parks that people have made in Theme Park Tycoon 2 and its insane how much time some people have spent on their parks. Even the fact that a single developer beaten basically most of the other games in this list is crazy.

As an avid player of TPT2, realism is something affected by the player, you really gotta choose to add realism which costs more but can benefit in ways like you can pay to be able to add very precise parts which could be used to make your parks more realistic

Loved this video! I think most ratings make sense with the criteria you gave - especially the mobile RCT games though, of course.

One consideration I would add to the price category is replay ability. I don’t mind paying a little more for Planet Coaster if I replay it over and over again because I get a lot of enjoyment out of it.

One thing you missed about Parkitect was the mods which give even more content to the game. Things like Coaster Anarchy and Construction Anarchy really open up the possibilities as well.

A good consideration for Planet Coaster’s optimization would be that it’s available on Xbox(PlayStation as well I think?) I’ve never had any issues running it there, so definitely would have been an A rating for me. I’m also big on scenery. So it gets a bump there for me.

i don’t agree with the rank of planet coaster. Yeah, it is pricy, but it is completely worth it. The creators spent much more time making this than almost every other game on the list, so it’s good that they are finally done with it. It is a great game, and it doesn’t matter if they stopped working on it, because of how well and how detailed it came out as.

I got planet coaster a few days ago when it was on sale for $12 and I’m absolutely LOVING it.

I think that he should give planet coaster a bit more cred. It definitely has the graphics. The coaster builder is simple and you can make insanely smooth coasters if you put some time into smoothing the track. I play it on maxed out settings with a RTX 3060 and a AMD 5600x and I haven’t had any problems with it. As he said, the frame rate drops if you have a big park filled up with props but other than that the game runs awesome. I bought the game for 12 dollars some a couple of years ago on Black Friday. I really recommend waiting for a discount because the appear quite often. Planet coaster isn’t perfect but very close to. It’s easily on my top three games list after Transport Fever 2 and obviously Minecraft. It is just a shame that he put a Roblox game in the A tier and planet coaster in the C tier. Planet coaster is a game in the S tier and you should really go right ahead and buy it.

Planet Coaster being knocked a 4/10 for being $45 raw and $100+ with DLC while NoLimits being given an 8/10 for being $40 raw and $100+ to remove the watermark seems disingenuous. Sure, NoLimits 2 has the genre’s best coaster builder and customizability, but Planet Coaster has Scenarios, Sandbox, Custom Scenario Creator, and a very large plot of land to build on. Planet Coaster’s coaster builder, while having lapses, is very good for what it is, which is not a roller coaster simulator. It’s a tycoon game geared towards coaster enthusiasts and fans of RCT, so giving it a node-based complex coaster builder doesn’t make much sense. What you get with Planet Coaster’s DLC is a lot of content coaster type wise and scenario piece wise, plus, the game contains items to custom build supports if the autogenerated ones aren’t your fancy. Therefore, I don’t think it’s fair to say that $45-$100 is not worth the near 900 hours you got out of it when recording this video.

Great video! The only change I'd make is swapping RCT1 and RCT2, and I would also make a category below "beyond bad" and put RCT World there. Lol

Somehow I feel that Planet Coaster was done dirty here. PC was the first stand alone game developed by Frontier, it had massive support for a few years and the steam workshop for that game is on a level of its own which wasn’t even mentioned. I think PC should atleast be in the B tier if not up there in the A tier. Keep in mind all the games except the original RTC are newer than PC.

Planet Coaster C? That is criminal

Love seeing TPWs London Resort in the video, their parks are the epitome of borderline-unplayable because of the insane detail and piece counts. Great video overall!

I’m happy to see that Theme Park Tycoon 2 is on here and that it got it’s due respect, it’s my personal favorite theme park game and it’s the one I’ve been actively playing the longest (since 2014!). I could probably go on for hours about all the things I love about this game but I’ll just list my most favorite aspects: 1. The coaster builder, it’s my favorite coaster builder and I think it’s a bit more refined than Planet Coaster’s, If you know what you’re doing you can make coasters about as smooth as No Limits, there’s less polygons but I think that works in it’s favor. 2. The structure building system, honestly this could be a stand alone building game without the coasters it’s incredible, I’m more so referring to the no collisions game pass building but even the on grid stuff is good. 3. How different it is from the others, it’s not talked about enough how unique this one is in comparison to the typical theme park game, firstly you’re not in that 3rd person god view all the other ones have, you’re walking around your own park and managing it like a real human (other then when you go into coaster building mode, but there is an option to switch to your character view). Secondly it’s multiplayer, correct me if I’m wrong but I think this is the first multiplayer theme park game, a lot of my fun with this game over the years has come from playing with friends. Not to mention the randomness of what you might see on the servers, it gives you a sense of exploration going to see what people have made, for other games you only ever see what people made if they share it, on here you get to go and see it all for yourself. 4. The updates, this game came out in 2012 and is still being updated frequently, and it’s yet to have a bad update! Some of the old features that have become outdated have been improved upon while still keeping them available. Every update is more impressive than the last, I remember there was a time people said wooden coasters would be impossible because it’d be too laggy, but the developer always finds a way! Also the bugs are fixed so fast I have no chance to even catch them! Theme Park Tycoon 2 is not only my favorite theme park game but my second favorite game overall (right behind Elden Ring 😙) At the age of 19 I can still get on there and waste away 6 whole hours of my life and not even realize it. I ended up spending like an hour talking about it anyways man I love this freaking game so much 🥹

Planet coaster beeing rated rank c while rct world is just one below tells me that the rating system didnt work out somehow. 😂

Considering I easily got 1750 hours and counting on Planet Coaster, I respectfully disagree with your assessment on price. Yes, definitely get it on sale if you can, but I think the fact the next most-played game by me is like, 700 hours (rct3), it's worth it 100 percent. Also, idk how much is Frontier Doesn't Care vs Frontier Wants To Sell A Sequel there is in the stopping of updates. I mean, 12 DLC with some pretty substantial content with each is admirable, and I prefer the game to not get more bloated.

I’ve learned to adapt with the roughness on planet coaster. If you build with RMC, I like to imagine the rough transitions as airtime moments, if I build with the ptc wooden track, I put “made by the Dinn Corporation” in the ride description. All my B&Ms are Giovanolas too

Nothing beats a good rollercoaster game, particularly the ones designed by Chris Sawyer (RCT 1 & 2).

Awesome. Got into RCT3 this year because I wasn't allowed to play as a kid. Love it. I'm going to play Parkitect, I hadn't heard of it before this video.

my favorite is Thrillville: Off The Rails. It is very unrealistic but so fun! You can build coasters, play arcade games, and even manage your own park. The game has so much imagination if you like that it is worth checking out

I wish Sim Theme Park got remastered/ported to modern systems, game was really fun but I think it focuses more on money management. Best rollercoaster game imo is RCT 1, such a classic, and I remember everyone having it on their PC as a kid, even non gamers!

Very great work! I do wish you had dived a bit deeper into the mechanics of the games because I think the complexity of Planet games versus Tycoon games in terms of staff, for instance, seems very different and worth mentioning between the games. This is only based on my time in Planet Zoo but very much I can handle the management complexity of an RCT game that I cannot in Planet Zoo and presumably other Planet games including Coaster.

I don't know about all the games but one of the things I like about Parkitect is that it has online co-op. But RCT 1 still holds a place in my nostalgic heart tho. Great vid!

I play Theme Park Tycoon 2 all the time! They have recently added updates to make the coaster smoother and more realistic. They also have a lot of customization options if you want to build cool scenery or if you want to build like a castle or something. This game is great for recreations. Also all the gamepasses added up in price are barely over $10 in Robux. This game is awesome! Somebody from ages 6 and up would enjoy it. I played it alot when I was younger and still do. Great game, great community.

In planet coaster u can select sections of track already built and you can auto smooth banking, turns, etc. making it look much cleaner

Great video! I came here because I saw Planet Coaster on sale for 22.49 on the PlayStation store, which also includes 7 DLCs. (Premium edition) I think you sold your point that for 45 dollars the game wasn't worth it but I may try Planet Coaster out for less than 25. Also, I hadn't known about Parkitect and No limits, I made sure to put them on the steam wish list incase they go on sale. Overall, great video!

I think your rating system is skewed. "There's just no way to justify that price" but then a 4/10 score on it, and that kind of thing happens multiple times. You also bring up valid criticisms but then undercut yourself, "It's easy to overlook," etc. Informative video about the basics of different coaster simulators, but weird ranking system fam.

Definitely a little offended by the low placement of Planet Coaster and RCT3 as these were the games I grew up with and that got me into themeparks, but I respect your opinion. Good video!

Would've been interesting to see how you would rate Theme Park Inc. It's the same style as RCT3, albeit probably more goofy (Realism: -10). It also features a Roller Coaster editor. It was launched in 2001 (3 years before RCT3) and is probably the first 3D theme park game - as far as I know. The game mechanics are also kind of unique despite being very similar to the RCT franchise.

Really nice video! Although it's not every Roller Coaster game made, rather every game in Roller Coaster Series Ranked. I can think of at least 2 oldies that isn't on steam that exist that I have on CD. Specifically Theme Park World (From 1999 and on both PC and PS1+2) and Ultimate Ride (Disney's Attempt at one from 2001). Both sadly have not been optimized at all :P

I have a digital version of rct3 platinum i got off amazon a few years ago, and it runs well on a surface pro. Just need to tweak the compatibility settings and it can basically run on the highest settings with very few flaws

The reason to why your transitions in TPT2 is because it doesn’t automatically apply a heartline and you have to use different techniques for smooth transitions. There are countless videos about it on RU-vid. Otherwise great video.

Recently there has been a new game that is super underrated called Ultimate Coaster X. It’s like No Limits 2 but really easy to learn. It’s free on Steam which is great. The only problem really is that it has only 17 or so track types. But it is pretty good for an indie game. Also there is Ultimate Coaster 2 which is bad compared to most laptop and computer game but the thing is, it’s a mobile game. So it just destroys all other mobile games. I would say UCX deserves a B or C rating. And UC2 would have a C rating.

I play theme park tycoon a lot I mean if you look at my 2 video you could see that, I've been playing for about a year and my favorite part is how much customization and freedom you get with the game for just paying 10 dollars you can get one of the most in depth building guis I've ever seen, the community is also very nice and streamers and youtubers often visit people's parks and show them off. The dev dosent talk much but loves feedback and everybody seems to live hiw even though he's basically just a single guy working on a game in his free time he still manages to push out free and amazing updates nothing but praise for this game and its community.

i can’t believe you added tpt2, however i think the builder should definitely be higher especially with the new features they added where yo can make the ride much more smooth, specifically into transitions

This is a great guide. But I have to say this about Nolimits 2. If you have a slower PC and you want to upload videos of your rides to RU-vid, the pro upgrade is definitely worth it. The pro video exporter slows the ride down to match the framerate so it's guaranteed to have whatever framerate you set it to. So you can just crank the graphics up and still record in 4k60 even if the park only gets 10fps if you play it ingame. It will take very long to record tho, but the end result is worth it.

Planet coaster is the best for all the theming you can make. It's my fav game by far. You can do crowded cities or worderfull waterfalls and theres Steam workshop to download real parks.

ive been playing theme park tycoon in roblox for like 5 years now and about a year ago i started this really good park and i recently got planet coaster

Great content!! Keep it up bud!

Theme park tycoon 2 has a very big amount of depth, it has monthly updates, primitives that can use different materials to make anything: Statues, custom supports, displays, buildings, scenery, and props. Look up anything about the game and it’s early looking design can bring so much detail that you would be astonished at the hand placed objects and potential it has. It’s probably number 2 on the list.

Good vid also tpt2 is pretty good but it needs station updates and other stuff the game is so fun because you can play with other people butt no limits 2 is realistic and it’s pretty good tpt2 10/10 no limits 100/10 a Also I love your racer reborn vid and also I like the music also the hellbeast vid is AWESOME thanks for the amazing vids woofles

I have a few complaints. 1. You said Rct had the first coaster builder in a video game and that is not true. There was Disney Coaster for Dos. 2. You complained about jarring transitions in Planet Coaster, this is what the smooth tool is for....

Parkitects coaster builder does let you edit the splines after you placed the pieces, so you can actually make it as smooth as nolimits 2 Also native linux compatibility, which is another plus.

What’s your opinion on the Thrillville games? Thrillville: Off the Rails on the DS was my first video game literally ever, and it holds a special place in my heart. Definitely gets a low realism score but that adds to its charm for me 🥰

Also with Theme Park Tycoon 2, there have been some more recent updates that have really added to realism with general building & theming creating infinite possibilites with advanced building & resizing. As well as an updated roller coaster editing feature where it autosmooths the track to be less jolty and less-planet coastery. Great video!

TPT2 is costantly updated and after the roll smoothing update, if you're good enough, you can make some NL2 layout quality. Add the incredible scenery builder and you can build stuff other games can just dream

Could you offer an opinion on which of the top few games are the simplest in terms of UI / intuitiveness please? My 5 year old has been playing Planet Coaster but occasionally the game will refuse to place something or do something else dumb with pathing and I'll need to rescue him. Would love to find something better for him.

Can I ask why you didn't include a category like "Economic simulation"? Except the NoLimits 2, all the other games are "Tycoon" games, not only coaster builders.

The initial shock of seeing a Roblox game lumped in with actual games aside, I'm really glad TPT2 got a high rating. I think it's not just a really substitute for genuine coaster/park builder games, but it stands on its own quite well. Some players go absolutely ham with it too, there's some fantastic stuff you can find on RU-vid and such, tho getting lucky with talented builders is uncommon. Benji Adventure's is a great example of this. His parks are way better than a Roblox game has any right to be. That said, I do have disagreements. A) I don't think making smooth coasters is hard at all, or at least I don't have trouble. The trick, honestly, is auto-connect. Make a sort of 'rough draft' of your desired layout, delete segments that feel off and use auto-connect, works wonders B) I actually think all the Gamepasses (except Jukebox now due to a universal Roblox update) are actually quite essential. Due to the scale, the base height limit feels super restricting. Even upgrading it all the way I find it restricting still from time to time. The Ride Operations gamepass is also essential, as the base gravity, combined with the vase height limit, ends up making some pretty slow rides with a traditional lift. The base launch power also ain't all the great either, and you can't costumize holding time for launches without the gamepass.

RCT2 should've been in the A tier list and PlanetCoaster in the B list for sure. i would also move NoLimits2 down a tier as well because it's not just about how realistic a game is it's how fun, easy to learn and visually stylistic it is as well and NoLimits2 doesn't look or feel as fun as some of the others. also i will recognize my Blue Tornado coaster ANYWHERE. so glad you showed it off in Planet Coaster segment of the video.

Do you know about ultimate coaster 1 and 2 on mobile. It’s pretty good for ppl like me who enjoy coaster games but don’t have a pc

I got Planet Coaster when it was 75% off on steam, €9.99 to be exact. Also, the game runs perfectly fine for me, even when I have tons of peeps and a park with a lot of scenery. Ah those 650 hours I could’ve spent playing outside.

Aww, I was kinda hoping for a skewering of Sim Theme Park! Also, worth noting that OpenRCT2 exists and actually improves a lot of small things from RCT2 vanilla.

Have you had a chance to try out Theme Park Studio? I supported their gofundme before they even released an alpha as the game looked so real. Anyway, looking forward to hearing what you think of the game. Great video and nostalgic!

The thing I would change in the score on planet coaster in the smoothness and add that there is a smoothing button to make your transitions not so hard

To emphasize even more the 10/10 scores to the builder and realism of NoLimits 2: I've used the game myself to gather data and develop my graduation project in civil engineering! Not only that, it has also been used in a masters degree thesis on analyzing real coaster designs :D Definitely worth giving it a look!

Okay wait... wait wait wait. You gave Planet Coaster a 4/10 on Price for being $45. But gave No Limits an 8/10 on Price for being $40. Because you inflated PlanCo's price to $100 based on game + every possible DLC. But you didn't judge NL's price based on game + Pro license. These seem like wildly biased scores. Also Planet Coaster goes on sale all the time, and No Limits rarely if ever does.

I was surprised at the lack of seeing Theme Park Studio in this video. One of my favorite builders ever, but could be hard to get your hands on as I have a physical copy from the Kickstarter from years ago.

I love that you gave the rightfully deserved respect to Parkitect! Such a gem of a game!

After watching this video, I really enjoy the ranking you have. As a tpt2 builder, I think tpt2 is great and glad it has updates every month and over the last 5 years, he has been improving the models and rides to make it better. I would say maybe you could have shown some of the bigger parks that are better and have more detail but it's fine. Great vid though!

Because of openrct2 I think rct2 easily becomes the best game hands down

I remember having one in the late 90's or early 2000's called Ultimate Ride, which was the first one I ever saw that offered a first person point of view of the rides.

The thing that makes the Roblox coaster builder so good is that unlike planet coaster you can change the piece length to any length rather than being above 4 meters and in 1 meter increments. That makes it super easy to make way smoother coasters than planet coaster. I love the coaster builder and it’s only rivaled by no limita

You forgot Ultimate Ride. Had a pretty neat coaster builder.

Will you rate park beyond?

@Doofles was wondering on your specs to your pc my friend for planet coaster optimization. CPU Ram and GPU

TPT2 Is Such A Good Game. Advanced etitor is so easy to use. its insane how much time is put into some parks. It is truly amazing.

no limits was really boosted because of the ranking method. i would put it way lower since it doesn't have any challenge mode or managment mode, it is more of a program for making coasters than a game, since there is no careeer or challenge.

what u think about indoor lands? or virtual rides 3?

Ik this video is a year old, but I did have one thing to say about the smoothness in Planet Coaster, do you guys use the smooth all feature when building the coasters? Any part of track that is rough when it comes to transitions like you mentioned in this video would be fixed by using that feature. You just go into edit mode and highlight the track and you can expand what is selected by dragging the arrows that will appear on the track to either cover more or less of the track, and then just spam the smooth all button or smooth turn and it should fix that roughness issue. Makes transitions super smooth but it's not really in a good position for people to realize that that feature is there.

I love parkitec, because you can play Co-op! And I miss theme parc world here...I had a very good time on PlayStation creating parcs in different worlds and themes. Loved it! 😊

I can't agree putting RCT2 anything lower than S-tier. It took everything that was great about the original and just made it even better while not really losing anything. As an older kid/young teenager, I spent countless hours in awe of some of the things people were able to do with custom scenery alone. I remember the RCT2 Progressive Hotels tutorial forum post in particular really blew my mind (don't think I can post links, but if you google it it shouldn't be too hard to find). It was WAY beyond anything it was possible to do in the original. Of course nowadays it all seems very quaint compared to games like Planet Coaster, but at the time it was amazing.

No Limits 2 was scored absolutely appropriately. I think you also should have included a little more discussion into the scripting aspect of No Limits 2. In my opinion it is was really makes it stand out. Great video!

What’s your rating on sim theme park? Loved that game as a kid

I’ve played a pretty obscure one called Maximum G Force Coasters it’s pretty good it feels like a very old No Limits 2 it does have a very cool two song soundtrack

Just finding this video, pretty awesome list. I won't lie, I'm addicted to Theme Park Tycoon 2 on roblox, its free and the little block people are so cute. I've seen some super duper impressive parks on there. great vid :D

Played No limits 1 a lot. I'd spend roughly six months to a year building one. My pc could barely run NL2, till it died. Being a former architecture student. The whole "CAD" like interface was right up my ally. One game you may have forgotten was Ultimate Ride around 2001ish. That was my first dip into Sims of this kind. It was pretty fun and easy to use. I tried planet coaster on Xbox. Might be just me. I've watched plenty of tutorials. I can't build squat in that game with a controller.

I’m bummed you didn’t review Sim Theme Park. I played the heck out of that game as a kid. I wish I could download it and relive my childhood. 😅

18:17 actually, u can make better transition if u set pivot offset to 2 or 4 (optional), just like banking offset in planet coaster also, a new smoothing feature has dropped called "smooth (continuous)" (u can find it next to pivot offset on the star button, but this has been changed so its set to default now). this makes coaster transitions even better and less buggier unlike the "linear" mode.

you definitely need to look at some of the theme park tycoon 2's recreation of real life roller coasters and extremely well built parks. they are astonishing!

What where the parks/coasters in the NoLimits 2 coasters sement called? I'd like to check them out. I found the Typhoon one on the Steam Workshop but not the others. The only thing I've been doing in NoLimits 2 since I got it during the summer sale is ride and mess around with workshop parks but I'm gonna eventually learn the coaster editor when I get the time too lol.

A Roller Coaster list without Bullfrogs "Theme Park" can never be considered complete. You're missing out on 85mb of greatness right there.

whats that song at 3:24 ive been loking evrywhere and cant find the name of it

I would have thought that Ultimate Coaster X would have been on this list! Great vid !

i was thinking about getting plant coaster or planet zoo but im worried about my computer running it. i have a amd ryzen 5 5600G amd radeon rx6400 8G ram do you think it would run these games?

There's also INDOORLANDS, plus an old PC game called ULTIMATE RIDE!

Idk if anyone else has said this but with planet coaster, they have a smoothing menu when your ride is complete. Also planet coaster does go on sale often