Theme Park (Nintendo DS) > Reviews (15)

I remember watching my bother playing this on the PC and have recently found out this was released on the PC in1994 which I never realised because I was born in 1992 but I can remember seeing my bother playing this. I think a similar game to this came out on the play station as well. This is a re-release of the PC version but on Nintendo DS. The objective of the game is really simple you are given a patch of land in which to start building your park on, as you level up you unlock new rides and better facilities for your customers. Once you earn more money and your park gets to a certain level you unlock new locations for parks around the world, different countries have a different layout and different rides.

On the opening scene you have an option to choose your username, this will automatically already be whatever your name is on your DS however you can change it, you can also set your birthday, gender and enter a message so when people see you your message will be there too example "welcome to my theme park" You are them taken to the page where you can set the levels you want to play at. There are 3 different levels that you can play at, sandbox, Sim and full. Sandbox is the easiest level there is, Sim is where you have a few more responsibilities where you control the people you employ's wages. Full is where you have to control everything from the rides, management, payroll and more. I always play on sandbox just because I want to make the parks only. On this page you can also choose the name of your park, mine is called "Legendvile park" you can also choose easy,medium and hard. You can also choose to have a tutorial before the game. On the next page you choose 1 of 4 guides to help you through the game, these advise you on whether to put the price lower or higher on your tickets and food or whether to add another ride or not,if you do follow these sometimes they are very helpful, if you choose the right one of course.

The tutorial shows you step by step how to place paths for people to walk, paths to que up on and how to place rides and food stalls in the appropriate place to earn the most amount of money. This is only several minutes and is enough to get you started so it is worth checking this out if you haven't played this game before. when you get your patch of land there is a wall all round it with gates and a sign at the front in the middle, outside there is a bus stop and as you put more things in your park you will attract more visitors as you have more to offer. On the top screen there is a birds eye view of your theme park in simple line form, on this you will see the space you have and what the bus is coming as a little blue rectangle will go across the bottom of it.

Along the bottom of the screen are your tools to make a theme park you first have the paths option, you have a road and a cue line in this option, firstly you need to create paths along your theme park so your customers can get from one ride to the next and you need the cue lines going from the path to the steps of the ride your next option is the ride option you start off with only 4 rides every year that passes you get new rides added to your list, each day of the year is a second, so it each year is only a couple of minutes so time goes by really fast and before you know it you can get roller coaster rides.

The next option is food you start off with 5 options, which are a mixture between food, drink and game stalls you place these between your rides so customers will go to these after every ride to earn you more money, the more you have of these the better and of course as the years pass and you get more money more options become available. You also have a nature options which has trees and plants, path signs, ride signs, toilets, and ponds.

The last main option that you will use is characters you will employ, you have a number on entertainers which you put on the paths, near rides and food stalls to keep people from being bored and unhappy in your park each entertainer is different and some can entertain better than others, you can employ the same one more than twice because after all it's just a person in a costume so there is no limit. There is 3 very important people that you need to employ and your park will not function properly without these one of them is "handyman" when people eat at your food stalls they walk off and throw the rubbish on the floor, and when you have 1000 people in your park that's 1000 pieces of rubbish at every food stall,t he handy men go round and pick up the rubbish, another is "mechanic" your rides can go a few times before becoming damaged, you need at least one mechanic per ride so that you always have one free if 3+ break at the same time then you can sort the situation out properly, you simply click on the person and then the ride that has smoke coming out of it then they will do all the work. The last one is guards, if you don't want any fights then I suggest putting a guard in the park every so often.

You also have a management setting option a lot of the options on this are for the full version mode, here you can change the ticket price, do research into brand new rides, warehouse for your food stocks but the one you will need to use is visitors. This is statistics, they are based on a pie chart and then explained underneath, this will tell you who is unhappy, angry, happy, who is thirsty, who thinks there's to much litter or not enough rides and more this is shown in percentage and you need to try and keep as many people happy as possible so you continue to get visitors into your park. The last option is so you can save it, give up, the map, music and the speed, the speed is funny as you can slow it right down or speed it right up and you see all the people running around really fast.

The game is very bright and colourful, the graphics aren't the worst but not much different to the original PC game. the grass doesn't look very realistic but is just alight green background with bits of darker green in it to make it look like grass, the rides do have good details on them, you can tell what they are and it is very clear to see. The people on there are more like litter blobs with several colours on to look like clothes this is really simply but it works with the game well, the one annoying thing about the graphics on this game is that the visitors for no reason sometimes go off the path and decide to go get themselves stuck on nothing or between your rides so you find yourself having to sell a ride of park of your rides and this happens one to many times every time you play.

There is a set tune all the way through this which is quite comical, funky and up beat, which I don't mind having the sound on while playing such as the rides going around, you can only hear the rides when you go near the ride so you don't get them all at once, if it's the roller coaster you can hear it on the tracks and people screaming with joy, you hear when people drop the rubbish, people coughing and the most annoying this is children crying, if your visitors are not happy the will cry and moan and this gets very irritating to listen to so I end up starting again or just turning the sound off.

This game is for ages 3+ I don't think a child of that age would be able to play and understand this game however the navigation around this game is very easy and simple and in set categories which does make it very easy to build certain things, the music is bearable but some of the sound effects like the crying is not, I suppose this is on there to notify you that a lot of people in your park are unhappy but it is just to annoying to listen to,if you have employ around 10 handymen to attempt to clean up the rubbish,it is annoying that there isn't any bins on this game as it would make it a lot easier because most of the rubbish would be there instead of the floor, The rides break all the time and you constantly have to replace them because they're getting to old, this is what it is like in a real life theme park but when it happens all at once is it to frustrating for me to care about when I'm playing so I get annoyed and start again.

You get to change the admission fee and control the prices of your food and drink you can also control the amount of ice, salt and sugar in the foods, depending on the weather I have full ice in my drinks, and 1 if it rains, it's best to put your drink prices and ice cream up on a sunny day as they are more likely to buy them more then. Despite this being a little frustrating at times this is a very addictive game and you'll find you've been playing it for hours and you haven't realised how long it has been. It is very satisfying when your park reaches a certain value and you can move on to a different country and try out the new foods rides and customers.

This game could of been improved a lot since the PC game, such as the people getting stuck on nothing making you having to sell your items to get them out. Also when you change country a lot of the rides are the same and it would be better if they completely changed it and the food and characters but instead it is mainly the same, despite this it is a great game for children and adults as I do enjoy playing this.