A Side Note






The RCT3 demo, and later the released version of RCT3 Vanilla received mostly positive reviews. Wikipedia indicates that fans of RCT1 and RCT2 were the most critical of RCT3. For those who felt negatively about moving on into RCT3 we offer this information:







1

With the huge number of features blueprinted, storyboarded, and coded into a game engine on which the developers at Frontier were still gaining experience it was a staggering challenge to get as many of these features as possible included and working in a way that was compatible with the maximum number of computers in use at the time.







2

RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 was released for Windows, for macOS, & for iOS, and there was an American & a European release date for each of these platforms. Atari had forecast these releases of RCT3 by certain dates and responsibly thought it best to meet the release dates it had given. It believed it had enough included in the development of RCT3 to justify a release of Vanilla on the dates we were promised.







3

After our getting thoroughly settled into the familiarity of RCT2 especially in light of its being a comfortable re-tread of RCT1, RCT3 took us out into new territory and in blazingly huge increments moved us beyond the comfort zone we had experienced with RCT2. Had RCT3 been released without requiring any expansions in its complete form in October 2004 we believe this would still have made most RCT1 & RCT2 gamers feel less than entirely positive about moving on into RCT3.