Theme Park

Theme Park (テーマパーク) is a management simulator developed by Bullfrog Productions and published by Electronic Arts in 1994. It was released for a variety of systems, including the Sega Mega Drive, Sega Mega-CD, Sega Saturn in the following year.

Theme Park was the first successful theme park simulator, and would go on to inspire other Theme games and the RollerCoaster Tycoon series. Players are given a plot of land and are tasked with buying (and creating) rides, as well as organising the general layout of the park, staff and attempting to keep visitors happy without going bankrupt.

From a Sega perspective the game is fairly interesting – the game was technically released twice in Japan, first as regular Theme Park seen here, and again as Shin Theme Park, a localised variant. The game was originally designed with a mouse in mind, but none of the Sega ports are compatible with their respective mouse add ons, whether that be the Sega Mouse or Shuttle Mouse.

Theme Park would later see a true sequel in the form of the fully 3D Theme Park World (known as Sim Theme Park in North America) in 1999.