From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Roller Coaster (video game)
Roller Coaster (video game)
Roller Coaster have left. The goal is to collect money — in the form of
little money bags — which have been dropped by excited
and clumsy members of the public throughout the day. It
appears that the protagonist is a trespasser and a thief,
although neither his identity nor his motives are elabo-
rated on further.[2]
Amusement rides utilised in
the game
Despite the fact that you are alone in the park, all is
not quiet. The electricity is still up and running and the
amusement rides have been left active overnight; they
are in overdrive and erratic. This is simultaneously both
a help to your task, and an obstacle. In order to reach
some money bags that are placed in high positions or
other awkward places you will need to utilise the rides.
Some money bags, quite dangerously, have even been left
in the centre of the moving rides.
The amusement park is not linear or constructed at
Developer(s) S. Brocklehurst ground level, but instead built entirely on a towering
vertical tiered structure. The smallest rides are located
Publisher(s) Elite Systems
at ground level, and gradually get larger and larger and
Platform(s) ZX Spectrum more complicated the higher the player gets. At the sum-
Amstrad CPC mit, towering over all other rides, sits a gigantic roller
Commodore 64 coaster, the namesake of the game. It will take a lot of
Release date(s) 1985 time and effort to reach the summit of the amusement
park and subsequently the eponymous roller coaster
Genre(s) Action / Platform game / Puzzle
which sits atop it.
Mode(s) Single player You will need to hitch a ride on many of the attrac-
tions to progress through the amusement park, and to
Rating(s) ESRB, ELSPA, BBFC: not rated
collect misplaced money bags in order that you may com-
Media/distribution
Media distribution Cassette plete your task. Some of these attractions include:
• Big Wheel,
Roller Coaster is a platform-based game which contains • cable cars,
some strategy and puzzle elements. Uniquely it holds • ghost train,
the claim of being the first video game to ever simulate • flying carpet,
amusement rides. • log flume,
Roller Coaster was released in 1985 by British video • river caves,
game developer Elite Systems, to overwhelmingly posi- • bumper cars,
tive reviews. It was, for a time, one of the most popular • gravitron,
games for the ZX Spectrum.[1] • black hole,
• carousel,
Plot • orbiter,
• and of course, the roller coaster.
The game takes place in and around an amusement park The selection of rides, and physical attributes of those
after closing-time. rides, strongly suggest the influence of Blackpool Plea-
The player takes control of a protagonist who sneaks sure Beach, which at the time featured almost all of the
into the amusement park after both staff and customers rides included in the game.
1
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Roller Coaster (video game)
Some of these rides can be dangerous; for example ing the danger may result in a partial and incomplete
the protagonist can be hit by moving carriages, or elec- tombstone, in which case the character will live. Howev-
trocuted by the rails. You may even have to perform er once the tombstone is complete, the character’s health
stunts, such as jumping from a moving carriage to anoth- is utterly depleted and the character dies.
er to grab money bags left in between the tracks. In this Apart from having his health be depleted until death,
effect the protagonist is also a daredevil stuntman. the character can also be killed instantaneously by some
The player must also navigate carefully through fun- dangers. This can be caused by numerous careless acts
houses and motion platforms, which are treacherously such as jumping from a great height, getting skewered by
going wild without operation, in your task to collect all an erratic turnstile, or falling into water (despite his nu-
the discarded money. merous athletic abilities, it appears the protagonist can-
not swim and drowns when falling into water.) Falling a
Gameplay distance from a height will probably get you killed more
often than any other danger.
The player has ten lives. Once the protagonist has
died ten times, the player loses and the game is over.
What made the game more difficult was the lack of
a scrolling screen; different screens are stationary and
open up to the player as you enter them, unlike a side-
scroller. In this way the player never knows what is
around the corner until the last second. The game is
made up of a total of sixty screens.
Features
The game was noted for its imaginative use of colour
and eye-pleasing novelties. Small cafés and sweet shops
with bright and differently coloured frontage are found
First screenshot of the game in abundance, lining the streets of the amusement park
in colourful little rows. Beauty features, such as artificial
In order to complete the game, the player must collect waterfalls and exotic |animals in zoo enclosures, also add
every money bag which is strewn around the city-sized to the colourful quality of the game. Palm trees and
amusement park; even the money bags placed on precar- thatched beach huts are also found on almost every
ious perches and in the middle of rides. In order to do screen and perhaps indicate a tropical location of the
this, gambles and risks will have to be taken. When riding park.
an attraction, timing your jumps carefully is essential to There is at least one part of the game which is based
survival and completing the game. on a real amusement park: part of the Log Flume in this
The player’s information bar is at the bottom of the game is held up by a giant Gulliver statue, a reference to
screen. It reveals the player’s score, which is the same the similar statue which holds up part of the Monorail at
as the amount of money collected. Each money bag re- Pleasure Beach Blackpool.
trieved earns you £100; this is displayed as 100 points and
not £100.
The information bar also reveals the previous high Critical response
score for any other game played during the session (since The following excerpt is taken from the ZX Spectrum
the game was last loaded up, that is.) This is useful since magazine CRASH (issue 66, page 43) which was published
you will likely die often and have to replay the game from in July 1987. The review coincided with the Encore UK
the start; you may want to compare your present score re-release of the game; however most reviews were pos-
to previous games you have played in order to determine itive in criticising the game and this particular review is
your progress in comparison. an example of that. Note that the editors of the maga-
There is also a bar which indicates the health of the zine seem to have developed a name and identity for the
character, which informs the player if something is protagonist, as well as a motive for his trespassing and
harming the protagonist. This may be caused by, for ex- theft. It appears that he is, in fact, correcting an injustice
ample, standing on an electric rail. When the character through his actions. However this elaborated backstory
is perfectly healthy the bar is simply empty and black; has been lost to the mists of time, and the protagonist of
however if the protagonist is being harmed, a tombstone Roller Coaster now seems set to remain anonymous once
with the word "RIP" will begin to appear (accompanied again.
by a high-pitch squeaking noise). Quick action by escap-
2
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Roller Coaster (video game)
’A crash smash!’ Encore inform us. And indeed it In 1990, Roller Coaster was ported to the Nintendo Game
was, at 94% no less. But remember that it was Boy as Dragon’s Lair: The Legend, with the game’s plot and
Christmas 1986 when we said that. So have times graphics amended in order to closer resemble those of
changed? Not that much because Colonel G Bogey is the original Dragon’s Lair coin-op.[3] As less of the play-
still hunting around his 60-screen funfair for bags ing area was visible in the Game Boy port than in the
of dosh pinched by a pilfering employee. You zoom Spectrum version, the display was effectively a window
around the well-animated and highly colourful on each of the original version’s screens, scrolling within
screens riding the ghost train, log flume, and finally each one and flicking to the next when the edge of the
after many more rides embark on the roller coaster. screen was reached.
The emphasis in Roller Coaster is to have vast
amounts of fun, and, boy, do you! Each screen is de-
viously devised, but not difficult to master once you
See also
get to grips with the gameplay. And the gameplay - • List of platform games
it’s so addictive! Don’t hesitate to buy Roller Coast-
er!
References
[1] "All Time Greats". CRASH. Newsfield.
Dragon’s Lair: The Legend http://www.crashonline.org.uk/57/great.htm.
Retrieved 2008-07-01.
[2] "Roller Coaster review". CRASH (issue 24). p. 32.
http://www.crashonline.org.uk/24/
roller_coaster.htm. Retrieved 2008-07-02.
[3] "Total Makeover: How some publishers drastically
rework games for different audiences". 1up.com.
Ziff Davis. http://www.1up.com/do/
feature?pager.offset=6&cId=3158520. Retrieved
2008-07-01.
External links
• Roller Coaster at World of Spectrum
• Roller Coaster at MobyGames
First screenshot of Dragon’s Lair: The Legend - note the placing
of the centre platforms suggest this was originally the Ferris
Wheel scene
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Roller_Coaster_(video_game)&oldid=471532828"
Categories:
• 1985 video games
• Platform games
• ZX Spectrum games
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