Why RollerCoaster Tycoon's easiest scenarios are the worst 

It has been brought to my attention that I missed two moneyless scenarios in RCT1: Icicle Worlds and Crazy Craters. The point of the video still stands as they have the same 700 park rating requirement, but the first mistake of 2024 has already been made!

As a child, I never new that there was win conditions in the game so I always chose Prison Island due to it having unlimited money. It was pretty shocking to me when I did "beat" the scenario by complete ignorance on my part.

Tbh as a kid I lived in the prison map because you didnt have to worry about money, honestly I thought it was a fun sandbox map, I never knew it had an objective lol

I always viewed these as a little holiday in the progression of the scenarios like a "slow done buddy, have some fun with the skills you've built up lately!" like forcing you to play in sandbox for a bit, knowing that you can beat this in like 5 minutes if that's what you want to do.

Now I want to see a full video where Marcel talks about the RCT2 expansions in detail since he said in the video that those expansions where a mess

It's funny you say this about Prison Island Marcel - that is the scenario that got me into the game. I was new to the game, didn't understand a lot of game strategies, mechanics, or how ride ratings worked, so having a time or money-constrained scenario was stressful. Prison Island allowed me to explore and learn about the game, and it's probably my favorite park I've built, even though looking back it wasn't that great in many parts. Not all scenarios are equal, but that's one that I really appreciated and look back fondly at. 🙂

Marcel, did you know that there is a guest spawn location in Sugarloaf Shores that cannot reach the entrance? These guests will appear, walk to a border fence, turn around, and leave. Not sure if OpenRCT2 fixes this, but it's another case of expansion carelessness.

When you mentioned that the expansions were a mess - it got me thinking about the art styles of the new scenery items that the expansions added. Those items didn't match the art style of the base game and it clashes if you look at them side by side. Yet another reason that leads me to believe the expansions were a mess!

Prison Island was my favorite scenario as a kid! I was capable of managing a park and its finances, but I found it more fun to be in a stress-free sandbox where I could build a park without needing to worry about anything. I spent dozens of hours playing on Prison Island, decorating and adding more rides, even after beating the scenario.

was gonna say that both of those sound like they'd at least make for fun sandboxes to make a "dream" park in without having to worry about restrictions if you wanted, but then I remembered that given the win conditions the ride selection would probably be absurdly limited anyway so I guess they wouldn't even have that

The default rct2 scenarios, particularly their ordering, is really messed up. I'm on the open scenarios project for OpenRCT2, and I've particular been working on some good replacement starting scenarios for the game. Hopefully we can get some fun stuff made! I'm making an advanced scenario for example where you're in space building a park on some asteroids.

I'd say I agree with you. But as someone who builds pretty ordinary custom coasters, both of these scenarios helped me to improve my coaster building skills. Having no time/money/reputation penalty means you can tweak and modify your layout until they meet the requirements and not worry about losing your hard work. Almost like an open map editor, but it still counts towards your scenarios list.

I actually enjoyed Prison island growing up. I was given a copy of the game as a young child and wasn't yet old enough to understand any of the strategy needed to beat the more challenging scenarios. Prison island had the perfect difficulty level for me at that age and is the only part of the game I remember beating. Looking back i can see why most people would find it hilariously easy though

I don't know, I feel like it's a nice change of pace to have some essentially sandbox scenarios; maybe they don't really challenge you directly, but the challenge is moreso what you can come up with yourself (and while the money may not be limited, the space is, so it's sort of a challenge in and of itself to _not_ go overboard and run out of space SuperVinlin )

I actually like Bumbly Bazaar. I simply put and exit path behind the food court that is the only way to lead to the rides. That way, guests are forced to pass by the stalls entering and exiting. And I have an assortment of pre-built rides that can be built cheaply and have half decent stats that will allow me to charge $10 or so when they are new, and perpetually $5 after guests decidw they wont pay the higher price anymore.

The minimal length requirement for Rollercoaster Heaven and the smaller map makes it a little more interesting than the Prison Island scenario. I think you can actually build the rollercoasters fully on the water on Prison Island which makes it a really sad scenario.

I would love to hear more of your opinions about the Time Twister and Wacky Worlds scenarios. Seems like an interesting topic

I always hated having fail conditions because i liked just sitting back and watching the park run. I would be working on my next coaster only to have the fail interrupt me. Having to redo work isnt fun so i didn't complete many levels. Sandbox is great.

Thanks for another great video. Really enjoy your content. I still remember as a college student enjoying a snow day with 8 straight hours of RCT2, beat the map with the big wooden rollercoaster next to beach and I had no idea you could buy that land on beach till I saw a video of yours.

I know Marcel has already made a video on this, but the RCT2 scenarios all being unlocked was lame compared to RCT1. I only ever remember playing Extreme Heights, or creating my own.

I remember I was playing through the RCT2 scenarios a few years ago, I hit Prison Island and I was like "...am I having fun with this game?" Because I was already relying a bit too much on prebuilds, and this scenario just seemed tailor-made to be cheesed. At that point I wasn't really being creative at all. If I ever get back to RCT2 I'm gonna have to restrict myself to no prebuilds

Oh, cool that you did a video on these two parks! I always wondered why they were made this way, they're virtually sandbox parks. Great looking maps, but with no rules it took too much away. Prison island you can just flatten it out and do anything with it - if you were unable to close the park it'd be different, but you can do that too. That and Rollercoaster Heaven, with all this confusing path laid out like a regular city, way off from how you'd make paths, and there's peeps already lost all over it. Seems like the folks who made TT and WW barely played the game to see what scenarios ought to be like!

Quick question for you, Marcel. If it ever comes to a point where you've covered every aspect of RCT would you cover other games like Planet Coaster or Zoo Tycoon? I'm curious what your plans are and where you plan to take us next. Cheers to another year bro.

I remember always spamming pre made coasters just to beat the scenario. Happy new year Marcel!

I always found it pretty hard to beat any scenario if youre trying to maintain a real world aesthetic with the park and not just jumbling everything together as efficiently as possible. I always end up saying F It anyway but i try

I recently got a folding phone and reinstalled RCT classic on it. Been watching your videos and having a great time playing RCT on the go.

Oh how I love talking about the delightful dumpster fires that are RCT2's expansions. I look forward to hearing more about them!

Not a fun scenario indeed, but i did like to play atleast the prison one at times as it was a decently pre-terraformed sandbox, where as you can make a sandbox with the scenario editor, i never liked a empty square map. So these were an easy option 😅

Perhaps it's low-hanging fruit, but I'd love a video with a "tier list" of Scenarios. What are the most fun scenarios? etc

That was exacly my problem when I wanted to play 'Prison Island' a few weeks ago. I didn't see much challenge about it. So what I did: just via cheats enable money. That was a lot more fun to do, and I did it!!

Happy new year Marcel! 🎉🎉 i was wondering and HOPING if you could please advise us on how to close our park (on April 1st!) I was so eager to learn how last April 1, but to no avail! I hope this message reaches you with enough time to produce an instructional video on how to close our park! Thank you so much! I love your videos!

I disagree with almost everything here, I really enjoyed both of these scenarios. You seem to approach them purely from a level-solving perspective, and they don't give much of a challenge there, but if you approach it more from a "let's build a beautiful theme park in the style of the scenario"- perspective, they're loads of fun, and the fact that they're unfailable is completely irrelevant. Why would I spam pre-built coasters when the entire point of this game is designing your own? I play to enjoy myself, not to get some yellow popup at some point. I built coasters in Prison Island winding in and out of the buildings and built the smaller rides in between those buildings, while in Rollercoaster Heaven I loved having the coasters fly through the spaces between the skyscrapers and imagining how much fun this would be for the people presumably working office jobs inside. I probably wouldn't have enjoyed them at all if I just bulldozed all scenery like the person did who made the park at 4:18, but I don't think any level would be any fun if I played the game like that. Parks should be parks, not random spammed prebuilt rides on a big square that together create some arbitrary statistics that make the game tell me "you beat a level!" Main annoyance for both of these scenarios that I remember was fixing the path layout that was absolutely terrible and would cause guests to go hopelessly lost no matter where they went.

Prison Island was by far my most played scenario as a kid, and thats because I loved the "sandbox" vibe it had. I could just have fun designing coasters on a cool island and not worry about anything else

When I played Rollercoaster Heaven the first times it took me a lot of work to create the needed coasters. It did help me learn to create better coasters. The trees were a pain though. And the path layout, both fun and a frustration for my perfectionism to remove all the dead end and double roads, so the peeps didn't get lost.

I actually _love_ those scenarios because building my own coasters is my favorite part of RollerCoaster Tycoon, and not having the pressure of money or park rating allows me to take my time and build the coasters i want. I do see how Marcel and others that like a challenge would hate it though.

Hope you had a good break Marcel, absolutely beaming to see new videos again!

If my memory is right there's another scenario in RCT1 that is like prison island and Rollercoaster heaven but more difficult. And that's Razor Rocks. Like prison island you gotta build 10 roller coasters with minimum 6 excitement rating but you have money to deal with. And some of us have made the mistake on focusing solely on coasters for 6 excitement and don't get stalls and less intense rides in

I can't wait until you somehow beat these scenarios with just a toilet.

Tbh, I don’t mind RollerCoaster heaven and Alcatraz because i do like to build my own designs in every park I play to challenge myself a little, Becuase even I said before this: “There’s already pre built designs in the game with 6.00 excitement or designs with over 1,000m and 7 excitement, and plop it down!” But yeah, it’s completely your opinion, no opinion changed

conversely, Marcel videos are easy to watch yet great

Rollercoaster heaven was mostly great except for the length requirements on the LIM coaster. For a long ride you need a faster boost but that leads to more intensity and excitement penalty so it was unexpectedly challenging for me

Guest 1: I'm not paying that much for Rollercoaster Heaven. Marcel: If I see I'm not paying that much one more time I'm moving to Australia. Go to Rollercoaster Heaven Now! REEEEEEEEEE! HULK SMASHY! *Smashes 21 benches and destroys 82 lampposts and trash cans and stone benches

Furthermore, their layouts are messy and guarantee that the guests are going to get lost. Prison Island has a lot of wide, open path areas while Roller Coaster Heaven is a veritable maze. You need to do a lot of work to get it under control. Roller Coaster Heaven has the additional problem of all those redwood trees that can only be removed by right-clicking them one at a time. The scenery clearing tool doesn't work and neither does trying to build through them. It's very tedious and can lead to hand cramps. Prison Island isn't tedious, but it is boring. A prison theme doesn't give a lot of options for creativity.

i really like these scenarios tbh. they're relaxing sandboxes where i can just go wild and make massive rollercoasters i wouldn't be able to make otherwise. :)

I do wonder about prebuilt coasters. RCT, like many tycoon games, suffers from trying to be a business sim but also something else at the same time (a coaster design tool). Planet Zoo had this issue: you can turn a profit and make functional enclosures very easily, making it practically a sandbox game about designing exhibits purely for eye candy.

To be fair, those levels seem like a fun way to make custom coasters with some decent prebuilt scenery.

I don’t mind these coaster challenges because I just treat them as sandbox mode. I’m not bad at the game, but at the same time I’m not really that great at building custom rides and sometimes having a guest requirement after year ‘x’ just stresses me out because I don’t feel very confident in parks with uneven terrain… which is most of them 😅

Thank you Marcel, I want to tell everyone on here my dream : My dream is to come home from work and play roller coaster tycoon. Every day for 1-2 years. Like what i did for many many many many years. It will happen in these upcoming months hopefully. Talk to a dutch person because I have a name Gretchen that my parents gave me.

I had no idea some of the scenarios in the RCT2 expansions were this rough, what was going on when making these?

So conversely, best scenario and/or your favorite?

Finally, a scenario I can actually beat.

This is the first mention of "Arid Heights" I hear in your videos. Its teh scenario I remember the most, build one huge megapark with tons of themed coasters in it, all of which had "Force" in their name... I was like 12 years old, thought it was cool ;)

Let's have a good 2024! My new years resolution is finishing my dream park: Super Electric Fields (working title) I'm a little over halfway done.

Starting this year of the dragon by dragging into bad scenarios, eh? I hope you had a good new year. Can't wait to learn more about the game with the things you show us.

I actually have a park on both of these scenarios. I use them as test beds for designs mostly. it's not really playing, but randomly it is. They're not enjoyable in the sense that i have to know what i'm doing, but i get to bust out some creativity if i can when building things, and not have money be a barrier to it. Otherwise, yeah, these aren't really scenarios. I would treat these more like sandbox levels.

I loved prison island as a kid. Now I realized how boring it was after building 7 custom coasters over 6.00 and not feeling like continuing.

I also think that the prison island has really annoying layout to build on.

Prison Island was my favorite as a kid but I was also like 6 so that might've had something to do with it. Sandbox mode in RCT3 was a game changer for young me :P

Already missed your vids, looking forward to a fun 2024🎉❤

I actually had a blast with prison island... but I removed all scenery, and made a park that actually looks good.

Cheers to the New Year! Looking forward to all the great videos 2024 will bring!

There's 4 no money scenarios in RCT1, Arid Heights, Crazy Craters, Megaworld Park and Icicle Worlds

Here's a 'fun' twist on the challenge: How many roller coasters can you build WITHOUT accidentally succeeding Prison Island.

Glad to see Marcel hasn't left RU-vid, Happy 2024 to him

When I was young I played so much RCT2 and Prison Island and Rollercoaster Heaven were my favorite parks hahaha

4:02 Marcel retracts an entire video.

Out of curiosity, I wonder how those scenarios would shape up if money was enabled. Though, it would be a significant change to the balancing, and neither of them have research lists. In addition, Rollercoaster Heaven starts with 325 guests already, so simply enabling cash won't give all the current guests funds. What's truly baffling is all of these no-money scenarios in 2's expansions also have cash machines, Great Wall of China included.

Icicle Worlds from RCT1 Loopy Landscape also doesn't have money. I guess it also has harder guest generation enabled? I'm not sure about that second part.

You gotta do a video where you rank the difficulty of all scenarios

I like rct1 over the second game. The scenarios are well designed mostly, not just a bunch of flat-open spaces. Rotting Heights is a good example for why I enjoyed that game, it wasn’t over-the-top, and it was more about making a successful park rather than a beautiful one.

Bazaar speedrun: make the Bazar the only path possible, build lots of cheap flat rides and set advertisements for 6 week an then close all rides. Every guest will buy something and the mission is complete in 5 or 6 weeks.

Harmonic Hills forces a player to use every facet of the gameplay model to complete imo it's one of the best scenarios from a problem solving standpoint, which is the bread and butter of the gameplay loop of most management sims; whereas the two mentioned here throw all that straight into the wind. You're absolutely not wrong here.

happy new year marcel c:

As a kid I liked the Alcatraz map because I treated it as a sandbox mode (I didn’t know there was an actual sandbox mode in the game).

Roller Coaster Heaven is a tremendous pain in the ass becasue of all of those redwoods

I wanna know a quick ranking of all of the scenarios

Can confirm the "no money but keep the park rating up" scenarios can be hard - or at least I used to fail them all the time as a kid!

I always saw prison island as an tutorial level. Like: 'look, there are stats, use them!'

Good to have you back in 2024.

In my Archipelago plugin I’m working on, I turn all moneyless scenarios into cash ones and have a custom, modular scenario objective. Maybe prison island could actually be fun!

I'd alway fail those moneyless scenarios as a kid because I didn't understand how to manage staff.

Good morning Marcel. Have you ever thought about creating a real labyrinth using only the scenery elements and paths? I tried yesterday and it was curious to see how they got lost in the maze. Only a few managed to get out and enter my park, the others have left it.

When I saw the title I thought he was going to criticize Forest Frontiers and I was about to flip a table.

The outro music is too cool, we are mostly nerds

And then there's also the scenario in RCT2 where all you need to do is raise the price of one of the rides a few cents and you win.

1:51 Loopy Landscapes has 4 of them. Arid Heights, Crazy Craters, Icicle Woods and Megaworld Park. Then again, Crazy Craters and Icicle Woods are pretty forgettable.

You also have rct3 where, when you fail a deadline, you can try again without resetting

I actually like Prison island, it looks cool. That makes it worth playing for me :P But yeah, not a challenge

Back then I refused to get Wacky Worlds and Time Twister on principle. The art style was atrocious, the rides and coasters were basically just reskins, and they were a clear cash grab. I was 14 in 2003 and even then I knew just how bad they were.

Okay but consider that the scenarios are there for you to just chill & have fun making rollercoasters

See you're talking like an adult who knows how to play video games. But as a kid who had no idea how any of the mechanics of the game worked and just liked building rollercoasters, Alcatraz was my favorite scenario.

Oh no. 2024 is Marcel's negative arc!

The "Build the rides with X excitement" are pretty terrible, yeah. Especially the "Complete these rides we partly built" scenarios, which require you to aim for a specific target in often a tight space.

happy new year Marcel!

prison island was my favourite scenario as a kid, not really though im just being a contrarian like everyone else is

Don't know about you guys, but my park rating is usually stuck at around 999. I consider failing because of park rating nearly impossible. Especially if you have endless money and can simply fix your rating by adding a ton of entertainers or free rides.

The reason I never beat Prison Island back in the day is because I would get bored too quickly. At least give a "you can't remove scenery" challenge, given the real life Alcatraz - the prison the scenario is based on - is a national landmark.

1:53 weren't there like... 4 of them? I remember Arid Heights, Megaworld Park and then there were other 2 similar to Arid Heights. One in an Alien world and another one in the snow.

Honestly, I think those two scenarios (and probably Great Wall of China too) were made purely to showcase the godawful expansion scenery items in a park context.

I, too, have ridiculed the Alcatraz scenario.