I suppose it is time for me to jump in here because it appears that the collective knowledge of the history has been lost. RCT Station was a great resource, but before it existed, there was a vibrant community, if not a fractured one all centered on the original (and IMHO still the best) game. I loved the Station, but the Station grew out of the ashes of the implosion of the RCT community, namely the diappearance of Chocobogo's, the inactivity of RCTUK, the bizarre and controversial shut down of RCTOA, and the odd love/hate relationship many in the community seemed to have toward the danimation website.
You want history - I got it in spades (uh oh - this seems like it is going to be a long post - it's ok - slow day at work - well it is Friday, you know!). (Luckily I have some help for this 38 year old memory of mine - Google.)
The great thing about the Station is that it made many successful efforts in uniting what had been a split and sometimes contentious community.
Part of this history has been alluded to on these boards before
Thrillville Thread, and discussed in passing in many of Boomer's e-views (search for Crispy, Chocobogo and XuXu's Petals), but here goes...
Please note that some of the below may be slightly inaccurate factually as I am relying on memory (supplemented by various online recollections such as Boomer's e-views) and also because I am only one person who can relate what I experienced. Thus, I cannot give anyone else's perspective.
According to wikipedia, RCT was released on March 31, 1999
Wikipedia RCT Entry. The first expansion (named "Corkscrew Follies" in the US, "Added Attractions" just about everywhere else) was released in November 1999. The second (and final) expansion, Loopy Landscapes was released in September 2000.
I came to RCT in the Spring (March/April?) 2000. A friend of mine had been trying to get me to play SimCity on the PlayStation. I tried it and liked it and went to buy it at the local Babbages (another interesting history
Babbages/Gamestop/EB Games History.), but they didn't have it. What they did have was Bullfrog's Theme Park for the PlayStation (I did not own a computer - more on that in a bit). I bought it - brought it home and absolutely hated/loathed it. I brought it back the next day and told the employee - he suggested RCT, but I did not own a computer. At work the following day, however, I found the RCT website and dowloaded the demo (it's safe to admit that - it was two jobs ago) during lunch. I played the 20 minute time-restricted demo of Forest Frontiers over and over for the rest of the afternoon. After work a few days later (after revisiting the demo more than a few times), I went and purchased the game and brought it to my finacee's house, installed it on her computer and played until 2 or 3 am (It was a Friday night) - I remember she was asleep when I left to go back to my apartment that night - I came back and played all weekend. I loved that initial weekend with the game - I was so involved in just building and watching that I kept playing the Forest frontiers scenario for almost a week - yes, it was about one week before I moved on to another scenario and realized that Forest Frontiers didn't contain everything in the game (like Go-Karts, not to mention themed scenary options). Eventually I bought my own computer because of the game - yes, I actually bought a computer because of RCT (and a pretty expensive one at that)!
I don't remember exactly why or when, but soon after I started playing the game, I did a Yahoo search for RCT and found a number of fan websites (this was before fan websites were mainstream affairs, and often such sites were viewed with great suspicion by the IP owners - I mean no one that lived through it could forget Paramount and Viacom trying to shut down Star Trek fan sites circa 1997-1999).
Anyway, the first site I visited as RCTUK (located in, you guessed it, the United Kingdom). The site was run by someone named Mark Goldstein, and it was a simply designed but very user-friendly site. The message boards were fairly active and friendly. The site was eventually handed over to Crispy (Chris Bennet - who OMG must be an adult of 20 or 21 years old by now) and he eventually ceded control to skippy (Richard McGowan), but the site had become fairly inactive during the transition (of note - popular contributing member Jacko became disaffected with RCTUK because of the inactivity and went on to form his own site RCT Inc.).
The next site (very soon after) that I visited was RCTOA (RCT Over America). The front page of the site wasn't much to look at and the news postings/updates were rare, but RCTOA had the most dynamic, creative, active, [insert other superlatives here] message/bulletin boards I have ever experienced with any website ever [that is not hyperbole]. Some of these names will not be familiar any longer, but back then, these were the RCT Gods among us mere mortals - the forum moderators (some more active than others, some virtually in name only) were Henry Winkelstein, Doctor J, Josef Drexler, Luke Harless, Greg Wolking, VooDew5 (and I know I'm missing at least one other person - EDIT - oh yeah, I think Steve Franks also was a moderator there too). The site was created/maintained by Denny G (Greg Denny) and Sim5 (heck if I know his real name). Unfortunately, these two personalities rather calshed with each other and it spilled over in a very public and very ugly manner circa December 2000 - in the aftermath of the bizarre 2000 United States Presidential election. The result was an extremely abrupt and shocking closure of the RCTOA site (note obviously this was not the website run by Josh Vandenburg whom I remember from those days as a regular forum member - his site was started to capitalize on (and in tribute to) the RCTOA name).
Looking back on it, it seems that the site imploded as a result of its success. There were some very strange jealousies being played out - between RCTOA and RCTUK, between RCTOA and Danimation - just a very weird vibe. But those RCTOA forums - Wow!!!
That leads us to Danimation. Daniel Smith is a computer graphic artist. To this day, his website still exists, but it is devoted solely to his career now - any vestiage of his RCT days have been completely erased so far as I can tell. At the time though, Dan devoted part of his personal website to RCT - he hosted an RCT megapark competition on a very regular (monthly?) basis, and the parks were often VERY well done. They also had a VERY active forum, but to me (who even then was over 30), the Danimation forums seemed to be filled with much younger and less mature members. I remember particularly that Dan and Greg Denny did not get along at all - even worse than Denny's conflicts with the RCTUK guys. The "Danimator" (yes he really called himself that) Denny G feuds were quite public and at times quite nasty.
Amazingly there were a few smaller sites that remained out of the fray - most notably Chocobogo's. With a very colorful presentation, the site was very inviting. Chocobogo's, unfortunately, was a victim of its own success. bandwidth was back then
extremely limited and expensive. Hosts often gave a very small amount of free space and for even a moderately successful fan site, the monthly allotments could easily be exceeded with just some track and park downloads made available (the game was that popular and the downloads equally so). Chocobogo's kept going off-line because the web host kept pulling the plug when the website became successful. Eventually the host for all intents and purpose shut the site down until Choco could relocate - but the site had lost much of its following by then (as had the game) due to the natural process of the old-timers moving on to greener pastures.
Sopme other notable sites at the time were Josef Drexler's own RCT Patch site (his name for it was the RCT Patch - but in true hero-worship fashion, it quickly became known as the Drexler Patch), Doctor J's own Technical Information Depot - devoted to all things RCT file and utility related, and some others that I have difficulty recalling the names of - even Henry W had his own website.
RCT Station came about while this was still going on - but its popularity really soared in the aftermath. RCT:2 came about before the Station closed, but again the site greatly benefitted from that closure.
Anyway - that some RCT history there for you all - in summary form. I encourage you all to read Boomer's e-views as they are with many of the personalities noted above and they are very well done.
Edited by dakinle, 01 June 2007 - 07:23 PM.
