The basic idea of Sim Theme Park is that you must build, from scratch, a functional, profitable amusement park that appeals to sim brats while relieving their haggard sim parents of their little sim dollars. The ultimate goal is that you become a sim fat cat, expanding your sim empire. To this end, the game gives you nearly unlimited control over every aspect of the park. You decide what rides to build, where to put them, and how long each ride will run. Longer rides are more exciting to your patrons, but they break down more frequently, meaning that you have to decide how many repair workers to hire. The rough rides can also cause your little people to blow sim chunks, so you need to hire some janitors. You control the odds of winning at the sideshows (read: carny ripoff booths), the price and quality of food and souvenirs, where trees and trash bins go and how the waiting lines merge with the walkway. As you can see, this title requires quite a bit of micromanagement, but it quickly becomes second nature. Best of all, you also get to custom design your park’s roller coasters, which you can then ride in the first–person perspective, a benefit not even players of the smash PC hit Roller Coaster Tycoon can claim.

Or at least it would be if it didn’t look so AWFUL. The graphics were originally designed for the crispness of a computer monitor, and the low resolution of a television screen causes everything to look muddy and indistinct. Even worse is the framerate, which is nearly a slide show, especially when you attempt to ride your coasters. Bullfrog certainly deserves credit for jamming all of the features from the PC version into this port, but you have to wonder if, maybe, it should have simplified things a bit. For instance, you can select the amount of salt on each concession stand’s French fries in single digits from 1–100 percent — would game play be strongly affected if adjustments were made in increments of five or even 10 percent? Probably not, and your PSX would love the simplified algorithm.

Sim Theme Park is a real fun game on the PC, and if you don’t mind chunky graphics and time slowing to a crawl while the processor struggles to the point of making you feel sorry for it, this remains good entertainment on the PSX. In the end, though, you just have to invest too much time for too little reward to make this worthwhile. If you own a PC and like Sim Theme Park, try out Roller Coaster Tycoon!