There’s great news for fans of the 20-year-old franchise, RollerCoaster Tycoon . Chris Sawyer, the creator of the beloved series sat down with Eurogamer and talked about what he’s been up to these days, as well as his plans for a mobile port of the classic game. He’s been away from developing for a while, letting Atari build new games for his theme-park simulator. Sawyer has been spending most of his free time working outside of the game industry, doing community outreach and riding real roller coasters. The interview is a fascinating read from a recluse of the industry, so I recommend checking it out.
In the interview, Sawyer discusses moving RollerCoaster Simulator to mobile: “ My ‘pet project’ at the moment is an ambition to bring my old PC game RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 to modern mobile and tablet platforms - not an easy task given that the original game was written in low-level x86 assembler code which only works on the PC. But with the success of Transport Tycoon on mobile and with the experience and willingness of the small team from Origin8 to continue working for me it was looking a lot more feasible, so they're working with me to create a very faithful conversion of the original PC game.”
This means that we may finally be able to relive our childhoods, playing the game the way it was meant to be played. I have fond memories of setting up long winding roller coasters, only to dismantle them with people still inside. I always though parent groups should have hated Roller Coaster Tycoon more than the gory shooters; at least those weren’t marketed at masochistic kids.
