On October 26, 2004, a legend was borne into an unsuspecting world that consists of offering visitors free drinks with a massive charge to use the bathroom, flinging unhappy residents through crowds at high speeds, and trapping visitors within small areas that force them to ride expensive rides to get out.
It’s also the starting point of the Mr. Bones Wild Ride meme, an exhaustively long and slow ride that residents would be stuck on for years, leading them to say ‘I want to get off of Mr. Bones Wild Ride.’ Which is also a fitting theme for all of 2020, surprisingly.
Of course, we are talking about none other than Frontier Developments Roller Coaster Tycoon 3, and it’s ready to make its come back to Steam after being absent from the favored PC platform for roughly two and a half years; it was removed around May of 2018 for unknown reasons.
Granted, the title is a bit long in the tooth; we’re discussing 2004, before Maxis was strung out by EA and when console titles still needed to be pre-ordered if you wanted to play them in the first week that they launched; online multiplayer for consoles was still very much in its infant state.
So from a title as storied as RCT3, the graphics do appear to match it at this point in time; noticeable polygons admittedly adorn the title, in spite of Frontier Developments upscaling the graphics so that it can function at 1080p along with ‘increased compatibility for new PC hardware.’
The title is arriving with both expansions already under the hood, Soaked! and Wild!, and is considered (thus) a ‘complete edition’ by the studio.
The interesting aspect of this is what it could ultimately mean for the studio Frontier Developments.
They’ve spent a bit of time working on two new entries into their park-tycoon series: Planet Coaster and Planet Zoo, both of which were noticeable for offering a staggering amount of DLC that supplemented the admittedly barebones original of the title that offering a staggering amount of pieces to build with, yet little beyond that.
If they are taking the series back to its roots with RCT, then some are concerned that we could similarly see monetization tactics that have been described by reviewers as ‘predatory’ and including content that ‘should have been in the main title’.
Regardless, that’s all likely distant future, as Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 is firmly rooted in its past, upscaling be danged; you’ll be able to once again build up the theme park of your dreams in eighteen days as the title is scheduled to re-release on September 24.
