Its like a dream come true: I can now play Roller Coaster Tycoon 2 on my Mac! The game I grew up with. The game I played for so many hours in my childhood. The game I still love.
Roller Coaster Tycoon was originally developed by Chris Sawyer. Yes just him. No team involved. When I tried to run it on my Mac I discovered the game is completely written in assembly code! I personally could never write a game that complex in assembly. Wow.
Unfortunately assembly code cannot be adapted to modern operating systems and processor architectures easily. The only way to run Roller Coaster Tycoon on a modern operating system was using something like Wine or a virtual machine.
OpenRCT2
But there is hope! I discovered the OpenRCT2 project today. It is amazing what they already achieved:
The OpenRCT2 project recreates the classic hit RollerCoaster Tycoon 2 into open-source code, expanding the game with new features, fixing original bugs and raising game limits. Several notable improvements over RCT2 are: Multiplayer co-op, a handy cheat menu and language support. The developers have taken the original game, decompiled it and rewrote everything into a newer language. This allows developers to extend the gameplay, alter the game, or even port the game to other platforms. At this moment, the game is playable on Windows, Linux and OS X.
It is still in it’s early steps however it worked perfectly when I tried it on my machine.
Installation
You can try it yourself. It is not very hard to setup:
- Download and extract the RCT2 Demo ZIP. This contains all the game resources. If you already own the game you can also use the files from the installation medium. If you want to play the RCT2 extensions too, you will have to buy the game to get the required game resources. You can get it on Steam for €9,99.
- Download the OpenRCT2 Launcher. Before launching the game you can adjust all settings and keep the OpenRCT2 Code you are running up to date.
- Make sure you configure the game ressources path in the launcher options correctly.
