Transport Tycoon

Transport Tycoon is a simulation game created by Chris Sawyer and published by MicroProse in 1994 for PC MS-DOS.

Chris Sawyer, who had started his career by converting Elite Plus and Frontier: Elite II to MS-DOS, had a great passion for Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon. He came up with the idea of improving the famous strategy game by adding an isometric view for a more immersive experience. He also wanted to introduce new means of transportation, which is how the development of Transport Tycoon began.

Regarding the visual aspect, Sawyer did much more than introduce isometric graphics. Firstly, he chose to adopt an SVGA resolution of 800x600, which was much sharper than the classic VGA resolution of 320x200. Additionally, to manage all the game elements, he developed a button and window interface, a kind of Windows-like operating system specifically written for this game, which ran on MS-DOS. Every window could be moved, and all were updated in real-time. Compared to other games released in 1994, Transport Tycoon seems (and indeed is) light years ahead.

This highly advanced game allows you to manipulate the terrain by leveling it or digging tunnels as needed. You can build your roads and railways to connect cities and industries. The game spans from 1930 to 2030. Initially, you have only a small amount of money, and with that, you must start laying out your routes. Like in Railroad Tycoon, you must connect cities and stimulate local transportation and economies with the transportation of goods, using trains, cars, and planes.

However, what Transport Tycoon lacks a bit is an engaging and challenging gameplay goal. It's not a fast-paced game; it's definitely more of a simulation with a relaxed gameplay pace than a strategy game where mistakes are heavily punished. From this perspective, the term "Tycoon" doesn't quite fit. But that's okay; Transport Tycoon is a fantastic software that will provide you with hours of enjoyment watching cars and trains on your virtual model.

If you liked this game, don't forget to try Transport Tycoon Deluxe, the enhanced version released one year later.