"Short but very sweet!"

As much as I loved Theme Park, I'd always wished the emphasis had been on purely building rollercoasters, instead of spending hours failing to keep staff happy and inevitably going swiftly bankrupt. And then 7 years and a lot of technology later came a rather obscure Dreamcast title called Coaster Works. And my prayers had been answered...

Yes the object of Coaster Works is simply to build the rollercoasters of your dreams... and then RIDE THEM! First though in order to get to the stage where all your masochistic switchback fantasies, you must progress through five stages with criteria such as height and g force limits. The early stages where you must build titchy kiddy coasters serve as a perfect introduction and gradually let you build up your abilities as an architecht. The interface for actually building the rides presents a vector based screen with multiple angles with which to get your tortuorous creations just right. Whilst at first it may appear a little baffling, you'll get the hang of it in minutes. Naturally the laws of gravity apply and in order to make sure you won't be killing people, you can give them a test run at any time - in glorious sexy 3D!

Being able to ride your coasters is obviously the main selling point of the game and Coaster Works certainly excels at this. They actually look like real rides and are nearly as thrilling (well obviously not really, but it gives you a good impression!). Combined with the sublime use of the rumble pack, it's hard to pick out any fault in this area. Sadly though, the are flaws in other areas - namely the longevity. There are just five stages to go through which I managed to complete in just over an hour on my first ever go. Ok, you then unlock the dream coaster park which allows you to build a coaster with pretty much no restrictions (trust me, this is bliss!) but you can only have one of these rides saved at a time, meaning unless you don't want to build any more ones, you'll lose dozens of your creations. Which considering the game uses 75 blocks on the VM is just as well really!

Aside from the fact that there really isn't that much to it, Coaster Works is a great game, particularly for coaster freaks who have spent most of their youths wishing for a game like this (read - ME). The graphics are lovely with lots of nice touches (the rest of the theme park looks very inticing!) and they've truly managed to create an accessible title on subject matter which wouldn't usually appeal to all. Now I'm off to try and create an exact replica of The Big One... bye!

GRAPHICS - 7/10 - Not the greatest you'll ever see, but bold, bright and most importantly, they actually look like rollercoasters! The wireframe interface is very well done too.

SOUND - 3/10 - The screams and rumbles are suitably authentic, but the music whilst making and then riding is utterly appaling. Think lift music at its worst and you're half way there...

GAMEPLAY - 8/10 - Hard to classify as actual gameplay as such, but creating and riding your own mega coasters is an absolute joy!

LIFESPAN - 6/10 - Only 5 proper stages but making the dream coasters on the ''secret'' stage will keep you going for a while. Just a shame you can't save more than one of them at a time. WAH!

OVERALL - 7/10 - The best (and possibly only) actual rollercoaster simulation available.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/21/02, Updated 11/21/02