Interesting story - love reading more of the stories behind some of the games I loved growing up, especially the people behind them.
Railroad Tycoon II is still one of my favorite games - the economic simulation side of it was a lot of fun, and you could sort of decide how much of it you wanted to bite off. I haven't really found anything quite like it since.
In some ways, it is kind of a shame - tablets/phones would make great platforms for economic sim games, but every single one I've tried has been disappointing for the same reason - the mechanism they use to funnel you into buying things makes the game really un-fun and repetitive very quickly. I wouldn't mind paying $10-$20 for a good economic sim that didn't act like this, but I guess not enough other people would.
Transport Tycoon (that this was based on) was also published by MicroPose. I don't know if Meier had any influence on the game though. Pretty interesting how much graphics improved in 3 years.
IIRC - Chris had been promoting the project that became TT for a while. He main work at the time was as a truly awesome 68k to PC porter. I remember a colleague telling me something along the lines of 'Chris should stick to doing ports, that is what he is good at. If he shows you some wierd thing with numbers and simulation, just ignore it'
Railroad Tycoon II is still one of my favorite games - the economic simulation side of it was a lot of fun, and you could sort of decide how much of it you wanted to bite off. I haven't really found anything quite like it since.
In some ways, it is kind of a shame - tablets/phones would make great platforms for economic sim games, but every single one I've tried has been disappointing for the same reason - the mechanism they use to funnel you into buying things makes the game really un-fun and repetitive very quickly. I wouldn't mind paying $10-$20 for a good economic sim that didn't act like this, but I guess not enough other people would.