MicroProse games in the 90s were next level. So many milsim games where you got to experience a crude 90s graphics recreation of being a service member shooting bogies.
I never could complete a mission of F-117A Steal Fighter on Mac System 9.
However, RCT was a “Minecraft” of its day without the support of the community. It was huge. Everyone was playing it. I wish modding was a thing back then. We would have gone crazy but then when you read how RCT was made - glad we didn’t have to do it.
I'm not sure RCT ever had a modding community, but it's predecessor, Transport Tycoon Deluxe, did. TTDPatch[0] had several gameplay and quality of life improvements, but it was eventually superseded by OpenTTD[1].
[0] https://www.ttdpatch.net/
[1] https://www.openttd.org/
If anyone’s curious to see what a lossless 6016x3384 screenshot of OpenTDD would look like:
https://dmitri.shuralyov.com/temp/6K/OpenTTD.png (25.6 MB)
There is OpenRCT2: https://openrct2.io/
I really miss some of the companies from that era... Red Storm Entertainment, Tom Clancy's vision, comes to mind. The early Ghost Recon and Rainbow Six games had a dedication to immersion that their modern counterparts totally lack.
Ghost Recon (2001) runs perfectly through proton on my linux desktop. I still fire it up from time to time.
At our local lans in the early 2000s, Rainbow Six Rogue Spear was probably the most popular game we played, and still there doesn't seem to be any tactical shooters like that available today, that focuses on realism over cosmetics and arcade-mechanics.
Also makes me think of the countless hours of fun Westwood Studios provided me with in my youth, real shame they didn't get to survive longer :/
They made Master of Orion II : Battle at Antares which is a 4X turn by turn space game I still play in 2025, as much as fun as Heroes III
MoO2 and Heroes 3; there's a combo that sends me right back.
I think there's a serious argument somewhere in there that perfection of a game is much easier in the "2D" realm and even now we've not really gotten close in 3D space - as proof I'd offer Factorio.
There’s so many wrong things about 3D games, I’m surprise I didn’t read an article about that yet
3D is harder than 2D for a multitude of reasons.
Because of this, heavy heavy code reuse is common and likely the folks who wrote it are gone, leaving only behind an ABI and a doc. This is why so many games have very similar design components to them. It worked for the business before (or a similar one), someone said sales go up, they pull in the ABI, now everything’s an open world, scavenger, PVP, base building, inventory management, shooter, looter, micro transaction scooter, rpg (with aimbot if you use a controller)
ahah that's a fun description, is there a game that is all those things at once though :) ? I asked ChatGPT and it told me Rust video game (and a few others if we remove one criteria such as base building or open-world)
To me, some gameplay was lost going from 2D to 3D, and there's a huge opportunity for some game makers to make something beautifully cartoonish pixel perfect 3D / 2.5D with the perfect gameplay of 2D
Oh Masters of Orion… such a die hard fan base :D and such an amazing game. I think it’s still the OG of 4X for me.