Big Rig 

Not many simulation games from the 80s earn their genre’s moniker like Big Rig. The creator, Bill Pogue, must have had a thing for freight trucking when he set out to recreate an accurate cross-country cargo trip. For goodness’s sake, this is a text-based driving sim that keeps track of the weight of your fuel. To the game’s detriment, all that engaging detail reminds you how monotonous the subject matter is. Read more »

Roller Coaster Factory 

When I was a kid, I had this deep obsession with wanting to get a roller coaster video game. The object of my affection was Ultimate Ride, which looked incredible and extensive for its time. The demo took a full day to download on my dial-up connection, but in spite of my fervency, my old desktop computer didn’t meet the system requirements.

Flash-forward a few months to a trip to Office Max with my family. While rifling through the bargain bins, I found a copy of ValuSoft’s Roller Coaster Factory, which looked pretty awesome from the jewel case. It would have to do.

This time, it’s personal.

Roller Coaster Factory is awful. It’s one of the crappiest, undercooked bargain games you could come across. Read more »

SimTower: The Vertical Empire 

Few franchises have the rarefied pedigree of the Sim series. Outside of SimCity, most of the Sim games never reached any kind of widespread success, but if you bought one, you knew what you were getting just based on the title. By their peak in the mid-90s, Sim games had become a genre unto themselves, thanks in no small part to Maxis’s master craftsmanship. Each game was the best, most balanced simulation that a given subject had to offer.

So it comes as a surprise that on two occasions, Maxis recruited outside talent to make Sim games. And even more shockingly, one of these projects, SimTower: The Vertical Empire, is intimate enough to stand equal to – if not a head above – all the others. Read more »