BY JUSTIN BRAXTON-BROWN
Enquirer contributor

Paramount’s Kings Island is closed until spring, so what’s a roller coaster fanatic supposed to do?

Take a virtual roller coaster ride. Paramount Kings Island’s Web site (www.pki. com) is offering a preview of Son of Beast in a download. Or you can build your own amusement park with rides from two new coaster games.

Hasbro’s Roller Coaster Tycoon and Electronic Arts’ SimTheme Park are two computer games that let you get your coaster thrills off-season. Both are extremely addictive and entertaining.

ROLLER COASTER TYCOON

Roller Coaster Tycoon Publisher: Hasbro Ages: Everyone Requirements: Pentium 90 MHz, 16MB RAM, 4X CD-ROM, 1MB SVGA Card. Cost: $29.95 Difficulty: Easy Rating:

Roller Coaster Tycoon
Tycoon starts you in an empty lot with four fences and a few thousand dollars in the bank.

Your goal is to build an entertaining and interesting amusement park. The more attractions you include in the park, the more guests that will visit, the more money you make.

There are several categories of rides, from the standard Ferris wheel to neck-twisting super-coasters. In each category, you have an option to choose predesigned rides, which are as compact and cost effective as possible, or a custom design feature that allows the player to make any shape of roller coaster imaginable.

The more loops, drops and turns included in a ride, the higher the excitement level, which means you can charge guests more to ride it.

You have to problem-solve, too. If you make a ride too exciting, guests will be afraid to try it. Or you may have to hire groundskeepers to empty overflowing trash bins, uncut grass and litter.

If a guest’s entertainment level goes down, he or she becomes more likely to leave the park. The longer you can keep guests from leaving, the more money they spend and the more the park’s overall worth goes up.

As your park attendance begins to decrease, the game includes six different marketing tactics to get customers through the gates. The park can offer anything from free food to half-price admission.

Roller Coaster Tycoon includes a multitude of different levels varying in size and difficulty. The more trees, lakes or mountains a park has, the higher the cost of construction. The goal of each level is to reach a certain park rating (given to the park by the guests) and a certain attendance quota.

As an added benefit, you can design your own rides and parks and then share them with other game players via the Internet. At www.rollercoastertycoon. com, there’s a section where players can download new parks designed by Hasbro and trade designs with other gamers.

SIM THEME PARK

Sim Theme Park Publisher: Electronic Arts Ages: Everyone Requirements: 200MHz, 32MB RAM, 4X CD-ROM, 4MB 3D accelerator Cost: $39.95 Difficulty: Medium Rating:

Sim Theme Park
Sim Theme Park is very similar to Roller Coaster Tycoon. The goal is to produce a profitable amusement park as quickly as possible.

Each time you pass a level, you get a golden key, which gives you access to other parks.

Sim’s best part is a first person feature, which allows you to go on all of the rides you create.

You can test every ride, walk around in the park from the eyes of a guest and try the sideshows.

One of the cool elements of Sim is the focus on the people. As you hire people, you have to keep them happy or they will strike.

The more people hired, the less each has to do, which adds to their happiness but takes from your wallet. As the boss, you can also choose to hire researchers, who will design new rides and upgrades for older ones.

At www.simthemepark.com, you can download new rides, publish your theme parks and play online. You can face off against virtual opponents to see who can build the best theme park in the shortest amount of time.

After the original game gets old, the site also offers full park downloads.

Sim includes a helper who gives you advice throughout the creation of new parks.

The little character lets you know when a new ride has been developed, when an old one has broken down and when your park should seek serious financial assistance.

How the roller coaster games compare
Both of these games are extremely addictive and the graphics are comparable.

Where Tycoon focuses on money, Sim focuses on creation.

Tycoon is extremely fun if you are interested in only building huge mega-coasters and making thousands of dollars. Sim is better if you like a longer, drawn out process where the slightest mistake will bankrupt the park.

Tycoon is a slightly faster paced game with more options for ride creation and less customer problems.

Sim’s big benefit is your ability to ride all the rides, which is a very entertaining.

In the final judgment, Tycoon edges out Sim by a small margin.

Tycoon has fewer park problems that cause things to shut down, and the visitors to Tycoon’s parks are more tolerant of little problems than those of Sim.

Regardless of which game you choose, schedule some time to play because both of these games grab you and take you on a thrill ride you won’t want to stop.