Transportation and Airport Tycoon
With the Railroad Tycoon series being so popular, I was intrigued to examine other members of the Tycoon series. We went backards to the Transportation Tycoon, and forwards to Airport Tycoon, to see where the series had come from and where it is heading towards.
Transportation Tycoon was released back in 1995, and allowed you to run simple train and bus routes in order to make money and overtake your competitors. With square-based graphics, you can tell this is early in the days of Tycoon-ism. You can't raise a corner of a square - the whole unit moves up or down.
Still, the game shows why the Tycoon empire has flourished. You can gain income with factories and coal mines. When trains go over hills, they slow down while they chug up, and coast down more quickly. You can block a road with your busses, preventing your competitor from reaching his destination. The game is, even in its age, quite fun.
Fast forward to 2000, where Airport Tycoon was just released. Going by the name "Air Mogul", this game allows you to fully customize airports, laying down runways and handling world-wide traffic. You can choose from many cities, each location having its own population and level of domestic and international flights.
Unfortunately, progress is not always good. In comparison with the easy interfaces of the Railroad series, Mogul is painfully difficult even for Tycoon veterans to use. The tutorial was dog slow, with no 'move along' options to hurry it along.
Customizing an airport with security gates and malls might seem interesting at first, but do you really need to determine exactly where people walk while trying to get to their flights? Air travel can be painful enough in person without spending hours on it in a game.
In all, we highly recommend playing the Railroad Tycoon games, and trying Transportation Tycoon for its historical value. If you enjoy these, hold out for Railroad Tycoon 3 - Air Mogul is a flight which might be better to never have left the ground.
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