[dwb]

I tried the demo for Railroad Tycoon 2 and never got to grips with laying the track. It never went where I wanted it to go. Having played the original Sid Meiers game to death, I was underwhelmed by it and didn't follow up with a purchase. I was also put off by the lack of a full British scenario.

David.

 

[dwb]

By chance I came across some screenshots today of the Railroad game we may all be waiting for - "Sid Meier's Railroads". Yes, Sid the man who brought so many of us endless hours of enjoyment and for some the mystery of 15 bit signed arithmetic rollover into negative numbers as they became /too/ success, has put his Firaxis team to work bringing the original concept up to date. Let's hope the game play is as good as before and that the game is not just "drop dead gorgeous" graphics wrapped around an empty shell.

You can find the "preview" site here at publisher Take 2 Interactive:-

Sid Meier's Railroads - expected October 06

David

 

[dwb]

>without all the bells and whistles
An unfortunate choice of phrase

; bells and whistles were the one thing RRT1 had in abundance - especially the time I managed to build TGV lines that criss-crossed Europe; the bell never stopped ringing. I still get the nostalgia pangs each time an update event happens on a PC somewhere in the house.

David

 

[dwb]

If everything is on schedule, Sid Meier's Railroads will hit the shelves in the next four to six weeks. The Gamespot website appears to have the most recent report (August 24th) from seeing the game at Leipzig. They have a few short "game" movies uploaded. One of them shows the inside of a roundhouse with UK outline locomotives (all tenderless) waiting for action. The nice thing about this movie (apart from the two LNER pacifics) is the muted tones of the liveries; there was a worrying number of Kermit green locos in many of the screenshots I've seen (over 70 on ign.com).

The descriptions of the game play sound exactly like the original Railroad Tycoon. Deliver raw materials, manufactured goods, passengers and mail and avoid being taken over by the "Robber barons". One of the "game" movie clips has a newspaper announcement of a new Baldwin locomotive in what appears to be the original RRT 1 style.

You can check it out for yourselves by visiting Gamespot's preview page.

David

 

[dwb]

There is now an "official" Sid Meier's Railroads website here

There is a press release on the Take 2 interactive website from 12th October which says the game has gone "gold". US sales start in October 17th with sales in Europe following on October 27th.

David

 

[dwb]

I found a long review on Sid Meier's Railroads on Gamespot. You can find it here.

Given the advice on having more than a minimum spec PC to run it satisfactorily, it will be a while before I get to try it out.

David

 

[dwb]

>My current PC has 2 megs of ram
I assume this is a typo and you mean 2 gigabytes?

>it's about 6 months old and it just about runs this program.
What graphics card are you using? I suspect that if it haven't got one at least one of the mid to high end latest chip card, that might be the source of the difficulty.

>Would I buy it again - YES I Would
That's always the best recommendation

Thanks
David

 

[dwb]

>Nvidia GEforce 6200se. When I bought this PC I didnt buy as a games machine
When my son bought a new PC in summer 2005 for word processing and a bit of Championship Manager, he chose a graphics chip that shared motherboard RAM. About this time last year, he got the latest version of Civilisation or similar, I forget which one and found it just couldn't cut the mustard on the game graphics. It would stutter, crash and so on. He was given an ATI card costing ~ £110 for Christmas and everything has been fine since.

David

 

[dwb]

>two years... another two or three years
That makes five. I guess at six years old this PC is well and truly past it, but I'm going to hang on until I can one with Vista already on it.

David

 

[dwb]

Compared to this PC mullarchy DCC is easy!

>Mass celebrations as I see this my 500th post................................ now what do I get for that
You get an extra square and called an engine driver. Next stop 1000 and station master. Early promotion is rapid. It's a hard slog from fireman...

David